


Your Sorrow for Another Coin

by elanurel



Series: Your Sorrow for Another Coin [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, Blow Job, Community: spn_het_love, Community: spn_xx, Cunnilingus, Drama, F/M, First Time, Humor, Romance, Shower Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-01-19
Updated: 2010-01-19
Packaged: 2017-10-06 11:49:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 40,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elanurel/pseuds/elanurel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Winchesters always needed protecting, from themselves as much as anything else - so maybe it was no surprise that Mama added all that thyme and basil and oregano to her spaghetti sauce every time a Winchester crossed their doorstep.</i></p><p>Written for the <b>This Woman's Work</b> challenge at spn_het_love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. This bloodshot blue midnight

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

_And will you take me as I am,  
This bloodshot blue midnight  
Like a tattoo on my skin?_

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Mama always knew when the Winchesters were rolling back into town.

Alice would come home from school and smell the spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove and Mama would be standing near the cutting board, mincing garlic that she'd swirl into a bowl of fresh butter. The old radio would be playing Zeppelin, rough howls and tinny guitars that made Mama laugh and joke about getting a new one before telling Alice to put the extra leaf in the table and set it for five.

She asked Mama about it, how she could figure out who was showing up on their doorstep before they even rang the bell out in the store – whether it was that dusty old man chasing a ghost or the woman with the fresh scar and missing eye tracking down something that flayed skin just to get at sinew. Mama would smile and say the signs were there if you learned how to read them, in the songs the universe sent you and in the way grass felt underneath your bare feet.

Alice listened to the radio every waking minute after that, wondering how many people would believe that Robert Plant was actually an oracle, and spent so much time in bare feet that she'd probably never have to wear shoes. She'd even sit with her back against the oak tree just like Mama did every morning before school; trying to feel the roots, trying to tap into the power twirling underneath the grass that was a woman's to call same as a bright full moon let a woman dream true.

All she got for her trouble was the ugliest pair of feet east of the Mississippi and the occasional spark of something that buzzed under her fingers.

Just a flash of black eyes or a woman screaming. Nothing that was important. Nothing that helped people like Mama could, knowing the right charm to make or the right spell to inscribe days before someone showed up asking for help. Alice wasn't powerful enough to need training, not with something as quiet as a hum that barely made her hands twitch.

And the universe wasn't telling her jack that afternoon as she tromped up the dirt road after being left off at the bus stop. The store was closed, the old sign bumping in the wind against the red clapboard wall, but "Ramble On" was scratching its way out of the kitchen when Alice flung open the front door to the house and threw her backpack near the coat rack.

She should have brought the backpack up to her room instead of cluttering up the foyer but Alice wasn't cracking a book until Sunday morning.

"Got a 'B' on my algebra test," she bellowed, taking a deep breath full of tomatoes and spices. Her eyes narrowed, watching Mama brown meatballs in olive oil; turning them on their sides before they were dropped gently into the pot. "Winchesters coming?" Alice managed, breath catching in her throat. She could hear _his_ voice, deep enough to rumble through her entire body when he laughed, and Alice blushed because Mama could see every goose bump springing up Alice's arms at the memory of his eyes.

But Mama just nodded and kissed her cheek.

She set the table in record time, not even needing Mama's help to put in the extra leaf, and bounded up the stairs to her room.

Alice Meeks was going to look _perfect_ when he walked through the front door.

Well, as perfect as she was ever going to look with a sunburn so bad across her nose that all the skin was peeling off and tangled red hair thicker than a horse's tail and twice as stubborn. Not even Mama could do much with it but twist it into a braid; Alice split it in two and made loopy ponytails coming off her ears, like a girl on that dance show that Barbara Jean was always watching whenever Alice spent the night. She tied the loops off with yellow ribbons that matched her new sundress and swished the skirt back and forth in front of the mirror.

It was the best she was getting.

Alice wrinkled her nose, wishing she had something sexier to wear than her school shoes and white ankle socks. She didn't want to look like she was _ten_ when he walked through the door, all because she wasn't wearing something slinky like nylons, but the only other option was a pair of sandals that'd show enough of the calluses on her feet to make Alice look like she was eighty.

At least she'd lost the rest of her baby fat. That had to count for something, even if her hips were fuller than the other girls at school and her breasts pushed together more than she'd like, cleavage as deep as Mama's.

Alice slicked on some lip gloss when the door bell rang and ran halfway down the stairs before slowing down, hoping to make a dignified entrance when Mama opened the door and the Winchesters stepped into the foyer.

He was the first one through, his eyes lighting up when they settled on Mama's face. She touched his scruff of a beard, three days worth of stubble that made Alice bite her lip, and suddenly his big hands were spread wide on Mama's arms as he leaned down to kiss her cheek. But Mama was quick and his lips came down on hers instead, both of them standing there long enough for Alice to blush all over again.

A sharp cough from the porch ricocheted into the room.

"Been almost five months this time, John." Mama's mouth quirked up in a smile as she pulled back. "Not even a phone call for six weeks," she added. Mama didn't say anything else – it wasn't like she couldn't have figured out for herself what was going on, between the music she was always hearing in the way the birds sang and the answers she could see in a bowl of cake batter just by folding it the right way.

"Man's got work to do, Jane." His grin lit up the entire hallway and both of them laughed. "That spaghetti I smell?"

It was the waltz they'd been dancing since Alice was ten, two years after her papa passed on helping a man named Caleb. A whole slew of people showed up for Papa's funeral, grim-faced men and women that stood stiff and straight when the casket got lowered into the ground. John Winchester was one of them, his face just as stiff and white as anyone else's but he knelt down and smiled at Alice during the reception, the ice in his eyes melting when she threw her arms around his neck.

Alice fell in love with John Winchester that very afternoon.

Mama was the one who needed a couple of years to catch up.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The air parted with the thick shock of the arrow whirring towards the target.

Alice took a deep breath, watching the arrow stab into the foam six inches off the mark, and made a face that had Dean Winchester laughing. He was leaning against the fence, thumbs hooked into belt loops on his jeans and one boot resting on a lower rung, watching her miss for over an hour. It wasn't her fault that she'd aim and he'd make a farting noise or some dumb joke about Sam right when she was letting the arrow fly.

But it was probably her fault that she laughed.

She'd only been practicing with a bow for a couple of months and she was nowhere near as disciplined about it as Richard Running Bear, a friend of Papa's who stopped by the store every couple of months to check in on Mama. Papa had a lot of old friends who did that, even tried to get Mama to buy a gun to defend herself from scavengers who wanted to steal relics and spells from the shop. Mama would smile and rub her upper arms with both hands and tell them that the store was protected from thieves the same way it was protected from dark things, salt in the paint on the window sills and sigils passed down for generations that were burned into the floor boards and woven into throw rugs.

Her mama didn't believe in guns and there was no way she was letting one into the house but Mama didn't have a problem with Alice's bow and arrows so long as Alice kept the bow oiled and the arrows out in the shed. Alice pretended she was one of those old warriors in Japan using Kyudo to center herself, an archery master becoming one with every arrow she sent speeding towards its destination instead of a scatterbrain itching to learn every little thing until something new came along two weeks later.

Mama said that being centered was no bad thing, that you couldn't dream true if you weren't centered.

Every night after dinner, Alice finished up the dishes and ran outside to practice with her recurve until the sun went down – but the way things were going, she was growing up to be the only woman in her family with blood so thin and a sight so weak that Alice Meeks wouldn't sense a mosquito until it bit her on the ass.

And Dean wasn't exactly being _helpful_ with his running commentary.

"Your boobs ever get hit by the string?" he asked.

Her arrow didn't even make it to the target, thumping into the ground.

Alice frowned, whirling to stare into his shit-eating grin. "Your dick ever get caught in a zipper?" she retorted.

Dean snorted, pushing off of the fence with his foot and sauntering over to where she was standing. He leaned down and pulled an arrow out of the quiver on its stand, holding it out to her with a gleam in his eyes that made Alice want to kick his shin.

"Why are you doing this anyway? Gonna become a hunter and sneak into the back of the Impala when your mom's not watching? It's not like my dad's gonna notice that you're there until he looks up into the rearview mirror and sees all those freckles."

Alice snatched the arrow from his hand and slipped it into the shelf, settling it into the nok and pulling it back choppy instead of with the smooth motion Richard had spent three nights teaching her. Alice's hands were trembling and she spared Dean a glance. His hands were in his pockets and he was watching the target.

He was still grinning.

"Screw you, Dean!" Alice snapped. "It's not like you've ever had to work to get someone to notice you a day in your life, even if it's just for five whole seconds. Not with that goddamn pretty face of yours and all those girls from town shucking their clothes off in my mama's shed whenever you smile." She sucked in a breath, jaw clenching hard as she stared down the sight, and let the arrow fly.

It sank right into the center of the target.

"Bulls-eye," Alice whispered, and suddenly she was returning Dean's smile with one of her own because he was winking at her, knocking into her shoulder and laughing when she knocked him back.

"So you noticed all those girls, huh?" Dean's voice was light when he asked the question.

It was impossible not to notice Dean and his girls, the way he paraded them past her bedroom window with a 'come on, baby, it's not far' and a smile that made Alice's hands shake as she peered through her curtain even if she was bitch pissy about that grumble of a voice waking her up out of a sound sleep. A different girl every night the Winchesters' big black car was parked next to Mama's old VW van and how Dean managed to sneak out on foot and find one was always a mystery because it's not like they lived anywhere near the main drag in town.

Recognizing the girls was even worse – the cheerleader with the bright blue eyes or the quiet girl who sat in the back of the library during lunch. Dean didn't seem to care who she was so long as she was pretty and willing to buck under his body while her bow-shaped mouth made a little 'oh' and he whispered into her neck about how close she was to coming for him, 'do you like that' and 'you can push harder' falling out of his mouth like reassurances.

Alice was still ashamed about that, not leaving well enough alone. Sneaking out after him that one time had been a mistake, watching the muscles in his back move and the way Dean's ass tightened when his whole body twitched and he moaned into the curve of the girl's shoulder. Alice had tripped backwards, bare foot snapping onto a twig, and run back into the house taking care not to slam the door just in case he had heard the wood crack.

And she was just as itchy as she'd been that night, storming into the shower and trying to wash off and her fingers slick from the soap had only made it worse until Alice was leaning against wet tiles making her own little 'oh' and wishing she had just stayed in bed because there was no way in hell _Dean_ should have made her feel like that just by watching him through a dusty old window.

"Hard not to when you sleep with your window open," Alice replied softly.

Dean looked away from Alice when she answered, scratching underneath his ear, and the back of his neck was turning just as red as her cheeks; like she'd opened a book somehow and could read Dean Winchester as easy as she breathed. Alice didn't try to hide her ragged swallow, either, for all that she wanted to – she was the stupid girl who finally figured out that Dean was the one she was really wrapping her hair up in yellow ribbons for.

"You want some help picking up your arrows?"

Alice blinked and nodded. Dean's hands were jammed in his pockets but he was looking her right in the eyes, shiny little diamonds that glittered in the setting sun and the muscles in his throat worked so hard that Alice wanted to touch his arm but her hand was shaking too much – a little bird fluttering just as fast as the space filling up inside of her rib cage.

"You gonna make nice and pick up the ones on the ground?"

"Nope." Dean's mouth quirked up. "I was gonna watch you bend over and do it yourself." Alice smacked his arm. "Hey," he managed between cackles and big deep breaths. "It's not my fault you grew up overnight and got stacked." Dean winked at her again. "And you wouldn't have worn that dress if you didn't want anyone to look."

His grin was full of teeth and Alice shivered – all because Dean Winchester was staring at her like he was the Big Bad Wolf and she was Little Red Riding Hood and if anyone was eating her right up it might as well have been him.

"If you're gonna look, then you're gonna play a game tonight with me and Sam before you sneak out."

 

Dean's eyes widened right along with his grin. "Just as long as you don't let Sam play fucking _Trivial Pursuit_," he said. "You don't know how much crap that kid's got stuck in his head."

"Deal."

The sun started going down fast but there was enough light left to see the glimmer off the metal tips of her arrows laying on the ground, peeking through the grass. They both decided without a word to leave the ones on the target for last, each of them walking through the grass, and Dean laughed when Alice shuffled her bare feet but the only thing she felt coming up through the ground was a worm; no secret messages or promises about what was coming.

She stopped in her tracks, one hand on her hip and her mouth going dry, when Dean leaned over and his t-shirt hitched up, showing off his hips and the muscles at the small of his back.

"Alice," Dean yelled when he stood up, staring at her over his shoulder with narrowed eyes. "Were you just looking at my ass?"

She wanted to tell Dean that he wouldn't have worn tight jeans if he didn't want anyone looking at his ass but Alice just laughed, swinging up onto the tips of her toes with her hands behind her back and her yellow skirt swishing around her knees before bending down to pick up the arrow near her foot.

Mama always said that turnabout was fair play.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The three of them didn't say a word when John announced that he and Mama were going into town to see a movie but Sam's eyes bugged out of his head.

He might as well have made a sign against the evil eye, as subtle as he was about it, because Mama laughed and ruffled his hair before kissing Sam on the cheek. Sam didn't scrunch up his nose like he did whenever his papa used to touch his hair and John had stopped doing it completely unless Sam was sacked out snoring on the couch with a book propped up on his belly, the soft benediction he'd been performing for years; the same way he'd smile at his sons when they were running in circles around the pasture, screaming at each other to see who could run the fastest.

His boys never saw those soft edges. John Winchester saved them for the times when Dean and Sam were too busy to notice but Alice always saw the way his body would relax when Dean was yelling at Sam about not being able to catch him, how Mama would slip underneath his arm whenever John lowered his head. John looked just as shocked as Sam whenever Mama did it, a ghost passing across his face until he tightened his arm and pulled Mama in close to his chest.

A Winchester always looked like something was wrong in the world when a woman touched him tender and didn't expect anything back in return – Sam's entire body stiffened and Dean's eyes were suddenly bugging out of his head when Mama looped her arms across both of their shoulders with a mother's laugh.

Even those girls Dean snuck into the shed with pretty promises wanted something in return.

"There's pie and ice cream in the fridge," Mama said. She smelled like rosewater when she kissed Alice on the forehead, smiling in John's direction. "You ready to go?"

"Thought you'd never ask." John's laugh rumbled through the room and Mama took a step backwards, her arm sliding through John's like they were in the middle of a promenade. John's eyes were bright when he led her into the foyer. "You're in charge, Dean," he said over his shoulder.

"Yes, sir."

Dean's body snapped to attention, a soldier with the same grim eyes as his papa and all those stone-faced men and women in black at the funeral, and she sucked in a breath. Alice was going to high school, and maybe she was playing at becoming whatever her mama was, but Dean should have been taking classes and flirting with girls instead of being a soldier in any army – least of all the one that stood between the world and the darkness.

And Sam wasn't much better. His eyes had that same severe sheen in them when he thought Alice wasn't watching and she had felt the calluses on his palms for the first time when he was ten and she was dragging him out to play in the front yard, rough patches of thick skin built up in all the same places where her papa used to have them from using his guns.

They all held their breath until they heard the latch click into place but they still didn't say anything until the Impala screamed its way down to the county road.

"That's just fucking weird." Dean frowned. "Dad doesn't even take _us_ to the movies."

"And Mama doesn't watch movies unless she's doing something else at the same time." Alice walked across the kitchen and started pulling out bowls, Sam pulling the potato chips and the M&amp;Ms and the Little Debbie snack cakes from all the places they were kept. "She says they steal the hours when you could be living," Alice added, handing bowls to Sam. "She wouldn't let me near a movie unless my homework's finished and I'm helping her sew charm bags."

"Maybe they just wanted a night alone," Sam said. "You're gonna wish you could leave when Dean starts talking about _chicks_." He rolled his eyes.

"I know where you hide your skin mags, Sammy," Dean shot back. He grinned. "And _you're_ gonna make it so you can't shoot your wad unless there's a picture of a girl with big tits."

Sam snorted. "I'm not the one who wants to rub his head in Alice's boobs."

Alice was laughing, doubled over as she pulled open a bag of Fritos, because watching to the two of them go at it was like watching one of those cable comedy shows before dinner at Barbara Jean's house – until the words registered. She froze when Sam smirked up at Dean, her fingers clutching the edge of the bag so tight that her knuckles were white and Fritos were spraying up into her face.

But that wasn't the worst part.

The worst part was that Alice Meeks would let Dean Winchester do it if he asked nice enough. She'd let him do whatever he wanted after helping her pick up arrows and pushing her into her very first bulls-eye, even if Sam threatened to tell on them like he did the day when they were kids and she and Dean went skinny dipping and tracked muddy little footprints all over the place.

It wasn't like they were brother and sister just because their parents were screwing each other and going out on _dates_.

"You little prick," Dean said through grit teeth. Sam saw the fire on Dean's face and scooted into the living room with two bowls of snacks as fast as his gangly legs would take him, not ducking quickly enough when Dean's hand smacked into the back of his head. Alice was already flinging open the door to the pantry when Dean twisted to look at her, the wooden handle of the broom shaking in one hand and the dust pan twitching in the other.

She swallowed when their eyes met. "Well…" Alice slapped a smile on her face, her cheeks feeling the ache when neither of them looked away from each other. "That kinda serves me right for looking at your ass, huh?"

His lips curved up into a smile and Dean's boots crunched across the floor, breaking up Fritos until he was standing next to her. He didn't even ask Alice if she wanted help, yanking the broom and dust pan out of her hands and sweeping up the Fritos like it was his fault they were all over the floor instead of hers. Alice took a deep breath and started finishing up with the rest of the snacks, her head so dizzy that she knew what it was to be a sheet dancing its way through a tornado.

"Are you gonna stop me if I kill Sammy?"

"He did make me throw Fritos all over the floor and Mama hates it when I mess up the kitchen. It's bad enough when dirt gets into her candles. I don't even wanna know what a Frito's gonna do."

Dean laughed, pealing out like a bell, and the bird in her chest was fluttering all over again. If anyone had told her that things would turn out the way they did when she was slapping the snooze button on her alarm clock that morning, Alice would have laughed at them – but there she was, staring at the broom swishing back and forth and her eyes were blinking because the lights in the kitchen were too bright. Alice shivered when Dean helped her with the rest of the snacks, standing close enough to her that he bumped into her hip as they walked through the archway into the living room.

Things were a hell of a lot less complicated when all that was supposed to be going on was a stupid crush on Dean Winchester's papa.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Sam had the game board set up on the coffee table, biting his lip when they both set down their bowls of snacks in empty places.

It was hard staying mad at Sam, especially when he looked up at you from underneath his eyelashes with those puppy-dog eyes of his, but Alice was the sucker who couldn't resist chocolate – and Sam Winchester knew it.

There were different-colored piles of M&amp;Ms waiting for her on the coffee table right in front of the pillow Alice used every time she and Sam spent all night playing games. "Are you trying to butter me up with candy, Sam?" she asked, sliding into the space across from him and popping three red ones into her mouth.

"Did it work?"

His grin was genetic, the same one Dean flashed when he was being a smart-ass or the one Alice saw on John's face when his boys were wrestling on the floor over something dumb like the last piece of pepperoni pizza, but Sam's eyes stayed serious.

"You know it did or else you wouldn't be smiling at me like that," Alice retorted. She poked his shin with her toe and Sam's grin reached his eyes before he flicked a brown M&amp;M at her. That was usually her cue to flick one back at Sam. Dean was watching them both like they were crazy but game nights had always been just the two of them – even before Dean was old enough to come back with a girl – so the only thing to do was choose a color and watch it arc towards Sam.

Dean didn't sit down until he gave Sam a noogie, Sam's legs flailing against the floor until he was screaming 'stop it' and laughing as hard as Dean was. He sat at the far edge of the table and stared down at the brightly colored game board with its numbered dial and winding path and three-dimensional white houses, and his mouth worked when Sam told him to choose a color for his car – holding them out so Dean could take first pick.

"You two are kidding me, right?" Alice snorted and Dean sighed, picking up the black car. He passed it back and forth between his hands before there was a glint in his eye. "Hey, Sammy. Don't suppose you wanna play _Trivial Pursuit_? Only time you're ever gonna kick my ass."

"No way." Sam wrinkled his nose. "All they've got is the _Junior_ Edition. I stopped playing that when I was ten."

Dean's mouth pursed and he was looking at Alice like she was still the little girl he used to make mud pies with. Alice coughed, handing him a little blue figure. Dean rolled it around on his palm, staring hard at it with a deep crease between his eyebrows.

"That goes in the driver's seat," Sam said.

Dean's eyes flashed when he pushed the tiny piece of plastic right where it was supposed to go and he mouthed 'you owe me' at Alice when Sam started explaining the rules. Dean managed to keep his mouth shut until Sam mentioned getting married.

"You mean I can't just drive the hell on through? What kind of game is this?" Dean demanded.

"My _favorite_," Sam answered, back as stiff as one of the old planks out in the shed. He folded his arms across his belly and waited, glaring at Dean.

Dean rolled his eyes, staring down at the game board – not seeing Sam's dreams mapped out in colored squares, a winding road where Sam could pick up every stolen thing and bring them with him in a car big enough to carry it all. A normal life for a normal boy.

There was no use telling Sam Winchester that his life was as far from normal as a life could be. It didn't seem right. Her life wasn't normal, either; not with all those folks coming to see Mama for a charm bag or a blessing and living on an old rambling farm stuck in eastern Kentucky.

But the Meeks had won the lottery compared to the Winchesters, who never had more than what could be packed in a duffel bag.

Dean sighed, eyes flickering at Alice without seeing her smile. "Well, just don't expect me to go easy on you 'cause you're a kid," he drawled suddenly, twirling the spinner with a twist of his wrist and chuckling when it stopped. "So if I get a ten, that means I go first, right?"

Sam's eyes were already stormy when 'kid' slipped out of Dean's mouth and his older brother's spin only made it worse, leading to a frown full of questions about how in the hell Dean managed to get a ten when he'd never played the game before. It didn't help that Dean cackled after Sam leaned over and spun a two. Dean and Sam both chanted 'one one one' when it was her turn to spin the wheel but it didn't work and she felt like a jerk for ending up with a four.

Being the last person to take a turn only made Sam want it harder, his mouth a thin line once all three of their game pieces were on the board.

Sam Winchester played _The Game of Life_ to win.

Watching him play made Alice's chest ache, how anxious he would get when it was time to get his job and how he always went to college and how happy he looked when it was time to stop and get married. Dean saw it, too – the way Sam's lanky frame would shake whenever he landed on a bad space, Dean's fists clenching underneath the table right along with Sam's jaw when Sam thought he was losing.

Alice bent over and pretended to study the board, her hand slipping to Dean's fist and squeezing as tight as she could. She smiled right at him, breath catching in her throat and daring Dean to jerk his hand away with a raise of her eyebrows, waiting for the joke about her being that weird girl in Kentucky with freckles and pigtails, but Dean's fist stopped shaking and he didn't bring his hand back up onto the table until Alice pulled hers back into her lap and leaned back against her pillow.

Sam threw his arms up in the air at the end of the game.

"I did it," he yelped, a self-satisfied smile lighting up his face for the first time since Dean had spun his ten. Alice threw a handful of M&amp;M's at him, giggling when he picked them right back up and chucked them at Dean.

"You didn't just…" Dean's voice trailed off.

The air was filled with M&amp;Ms and it crossed Alice's mind that she should probably put a stop to it but they both looked so happy that Alice figured she wouldn't mind cleaning up after Sam had gone to bed and Dean went to town to pick up his girl from wherever he found them. She didn't have anything else to do anyway but homework and it was something to keep her mind off of whatever would be going on in the shed when Dean got back, from wishing that it was her.

Alice shook her head sharply.

Dean stood up and stretched. He scrubbed his knuckles down his cheek and looked at the clock, his entire body wrapping into itself like a coil getting ready to spring. She sucked in a breath, knowing where it was leading, and grabbed a handful of sour cream and onion potato chips. "Wanna play again, Sam?" she asked.

Sam nodded eagerly and started picking up the money.

Dean watched her chew, eyes narrowed. "You kicking me out of your house?"

"I just thought you'd wanna…"

"I wanna stay here," Dean said, deliberately sitting down right next to her. "Someone's gotta keep you from flashing Sam whenever you bend over and I'm volunteering for the job." He bumped her knee with his own and took some of the chips out of her hand, laughing when her mouth dropped. "You got a problem with that?" he added, sticking a chip into Alice's mouth and handing her a glass of raspberry tea when she started choking on it.

"I don't," Sam crowed. "You're _both_ going down!"

Alice elbowed Dean in the chest when he snorted but it didn't matter.

Sam was so caught up in the game that he didn't notice a thing. He didn't see the way Dean's eyes shifted towards the foyer every time they reset the board, head cocked like he was listening for noises she and Sam weren't able to hear. Sam just wanted to play and they kept playing, even when Sam's chin was falling down onto his chest, eyes closing before his head shot back up with an 'I'm awake' or an 'is it my turn' until Dean touched her knee and pointed towards Mama's old grandfather clock.

It was almost one in the morning and there was no sign of their parents.

They both slipped out from behind the coffee table, Dean pulling Sam up into a stand while Alice slid her arm around Sam's waist. "You won again, Sam," she whispered into his ear.

Dean didn't need her help getting Sam up the stairs and into the bedroom they shared whenever the Winchesters came to visit but Alice followed them all the same, even though Dean knew where the linen closet was and she doubted that Sam was waking up and asking for an extra blanket. She didn't want to be the one sitting alone in the living room when Sheriff Tompkins called, asking her to wait until someone picked her up so she could go identify two broken bodies at County General, and blood pounded through her ears like a drum when Sam's body slumped to the bed.

Sam mumbled something and curled onto his side, a sleepy little smile on his face.

"He took my mama out hunting, didn't he?" Alice hissed, glancing sideways at Dean.

"I think so," he whispered back. And he looked angry, his fists clenching at his side.

She turned on her heel and pushed past him towards the door.

Alice didn't need his help cleaning up the living room but Dean followed her back down the stairs anyway. It didn't take her long to find the M&amp;Ms since most of them were scattered around the coffee table and the ones that weren't would show up in the morning or a week later or some time when it didn't matter that their parents had been out _hunting_ while their kids stayed home, whooping it up like idiots and throwing M&amp;Ms at each other.

Mama could be laying in some old house ripped apart by someone else's nightmare, blood pooling out of her mouth while John was screaming and shooting rock salt all over the place, and all _she_ could do was take bowls of potato chips and snack cakes back into the kitchen. All she could do was wait, grabbing one of the old washcloths that Mama used for dusting, and the only thing standing between Alice Meeks and the nearest bookcase was Dean Winchester, his fists still clenching and his mouth working just as hard as hers.

Alice watched him for all of five seconds before she started crossing the room, the rag fluttering to the worn carpet, and Dean met her halfway. His body was rigid wherever it touched a part of hers, arms bent at an angle so he could hold her at arm's length, and it probably should have pissed her off when Dean began patting her head like she was a puppy – but he was breathing just as tattered as she was until Alice made the decision for both of them and pulled him in close, arms tightening around his waist as she rested her forehead on his chest.

He didn't laugh at her once when she started crying, not even making a crack about his wet t-shirt.


	2. The lilac wind where no one goes

They were sitting in the dark, listening to crickets and the steady tick of the clock.

Alice had curled up in the corner of the couch, arms tucked around her legs as tight as she could make herself without turning to stone. Dean's head was lolling against the back cushion, his arms flung out on either side of his body and legs stretching out to the floor. Even unfolded like a rag doll, his muscles were tense and Alice watched the sheen of his eyes staring up into the ceiling. He would blink whenever she breathed too loud, looking at her once when the clock struck two and a sharp sob wormed its way out like Alice was a rotten apple.

There was just enough light filtering in through the curtains to make shadows of Dean's profile, blurring into nothing but shapes the longer Alice stared at him. She tried to focus on his breathing, as slow and steady as Mama's grandfather clock, and pour herself out like she was spreading roots underneath the old oak tree; resting her cheek on her arm and closing her eyes. But the only pictures being sent to her were ones that made Alice's heart beat off-key against her rib cage, keeping time to a cascade of rock salt pellets scattering across the floor and John's chest slowing down while Mama rocked him back and forth in her arms.

Her eyes flung open when the scratch of wood against wood matched her mama's screams and Alice sucked in a breath. Two shiny spots focused on her and Dean brought a finger up to his mouth the same way he used to do when they were little and they were sneaking Sam outside to catch frogs with them when Sam was supposed to be taking a nap. Alice nodded, twisting her head just enough to see into the kitchen.

"Shit," John hissed, watching Mama thread a needle. He swallowed before kicking back a tumbler, closing his eyes while Mama leaned over, and Alice's shoulders jerked right along with his when the needle poked through skin. "That was close," John added, pouring more whiskey into his glass.

Mama didn't say anything but her eyes were soft when she looked up at John and Alice bit her knuckles to keep from screaming, wishing she had more than a tumbler full of John Winchester's whiskey because a ring of bruises shaped like fingers curled around Mama's neck; every slender blemish topped off with a red ruby bright enough to glisten in the light. The same color peeked out of five puckered gashes on John's arm, being sewn closed with the same tiny stitches that Mama used to embroider charm bags.

John slammed another tumbler of whiskey, his skin white when Mama tied off the first row stitches. His eyes blew themselves wide when she started threading the needle again, mouth slack and hanging open like he was nothing more than an empty shell. The only reason John Winchester was moving when the glass fell out of his hand and rolled onto the floor was because his body was sliding down the chair to meet it there.

Mama just cocked her head and licked her thumb, pressing it down on John's forehead like she was a crow girl and even Alice could feel the tendril connecting Mama into the earth for all that Jane Meeks was sitting in a rickety kitchen chair with a needle in one hand and purple splotches on her throat from whatever had sliced up her man. Alice's thumbs twitched when John's body snapped straight and he started blinking and it was her turn to put a finger to her lips when Dean gasped.

The muscles in John's neck clenched when Mama started sewing up the second cut, another hiss and a swallow of whiskey keeping his ass plastered to the chair while Mama's hand made quick work; Mama hummed, calm like a lullaby, and John didn't even move by the time the needle was making a third pass up his arm.

There was more power in her mama's right pinkie than Alice had in her entire body and no amount of wishing and walking bare foot was ever changing that. Her spit couldn't even wash dirt off of her forearm whenever Alice leaned against the bus window on the way to school and watched the grass waving in the wind.

"How do we explain this to the kids?" John asked finally, his growl turning into sandpaper from the whiskey. "They think we went to the movies."

Alice's eyes flickered towards Dean. His left hand was clenching in and out of a fist, lying wrist up to the ceiling, and she didn't blame him for the way his glittering eyes narrowed into slits because his papa was being an ass; trying to hide the truth from boys overflowing with the things that went bump in the night, howling in basements and digging their way out of the ground when the crone's moon was hiding behind the stars. She'd take back the stories for them herself if she could, even if it meant growing up without Dean pulling on her ponytails or Sam spinning with her in the pasture until they both fell down dizzy.

"All three of them are hunter's children," Mama said. Her laugh was gentle and she pushed red curls away from her face, elbow resting on the table. "Are you planning on wearing long-sleeved shirts just to cover up your bandages?" Chair legs scraped across the floor as Mama headed towards the sink. "I've got no intention of wearing a scarf in the middle of April," she added, looking at John over her shoulder.

He flashed Mama the smile that had made Alice's knees go weak for two years running but he didn't say anything until Mama was opening up one of salve jars, the one without comfrey because John's cuts were too deep no matter how neatly they were sewn shut.

"Jesus, Jane. That smells like something crawled up a horse and died."

"I'm not making you drink anything this time, am I?" Mama said, lightly dabbing the ointment directly onto the stitches. "My mama used to say that you could always judge a salve's power by how awful it smelled." She grinned. "Unless you accidentally added in something that was poisonous."

It wasn't true at all. Her mama usually put in a neutral essential oil that wouldn't hurt the healing properties of the herbs so that her salves would smell nice but it made John laugh and duck his mouth down to Mama's with a deep chuckle that settled in Alice's belly, heat spreading down her legs as her cheeks flushed.

"You almost done?"

"I will be if you stop kissing me," Mama answered. She pulled back, wiping her hands on a towel and grabbing some gauze out of her first aid basket. John watched her fingers while Mama worked, an old ghost staring out of his eyes when he suddenly leaned over and poured another tumbler full of whiskey. Mama was singing under her breath again, a whispering melody that burst through Alice like a gust of rain-drenched air, and John's mouth quirked up when Mama was finished.

John picked up a cotton ball and poured out some hydrogen peroxide on it from the bottle sitting in front of them, squeezing the excess out on one of Mama's red spots. Even sitting in the living room, Alice could see the infection bubbling out from the wound. Mama's cheek muscles tightened when John moved on to the second cut but all she did was grimace and hand John the same jar of ointment she had used on his arm.

As soon as Mama flipped the lid down on her basket, Alice scrunched her eyes closed and Dean let loose with a snore that would have rattled the rafters if they were in the attic. She had to bite the inside of her cheek just to keep from laughing because the second snore that ripped across the living room would have been enough to break the Dalai Lama, let alone some girl who still couldn't keep from chasing butterflies when she was out weeding in the garden.

"That's a surefire way for your boy to get a crick in his neck."

The stairs started squeaking and John laughed, his voice muffled by the stairwell. "Last time I tried to wake him up for breakfast, Dean pulled a knife on me."

There was something in the way that he said it that made Alice's throat swell – and she wasn't sure if it was pride or if it was something else, another ghost trapped in a laugh because remembering that the Winchester boys were soldiers before they were anything else throbbed in places where people should never hurt. Alice guessed that it was both because it hurt even more knowing that their papa was the one who made them that way, turned his sons into boys who couldn't even sleep easy, and she was just a girl sitting on the outside watching the whole thing.

Even her mama's tiny sigh as they turned onto the landing couldn't dull the ache.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Alice uncurled just enough to slip out a leg and touch Dean's thigh with her toe, a nudge that probably would have gotten her foot lopped off if he had actually been sleeping and there was a knife hidden somewhere in the couch. He might as well have been stone, the muscles in his thigh wound up tighter than a rubber band airplane.

"You okay, Dean?" she whispered.

The only thing coming out of him was breath, tattered like the ribbons Alice always tied onto the old oak as soon as the dust from the Impala turning onto the county road had cleared, and she sat up; kneeling close and touching his shoulder. Dean flinched when her fingertips lightly brushed the cotton, a frown she could see in the shadows when Alice pulled her hand away. She wanted to say something but Alice Meeks wasn't good with words that could heal just like she wasn't good at reading omens in the wind or even keeping a goldfish in a bowl without killing it somehow.

It wasn't enough but all she could do was watch.

"Your mom's all banged up 'cause of me. I shoulda been the one hunting with my dad." His voice cracked and Dean was suddenly tugging his t-shirt up over his head. He kept it bunched in a fist, balanced on his knee while he stared Alice down with grit teeth like he was trying to force her to look away first. There were three scars running across his belly, white and fresh and shiny in the light coming through the crack between the curtains, and Alice couldn't keep herself from touching them when her hands twitched all on their own; tracing the uneven stitches and the furrowed skin, warmer than the rest of him.

"What happened?"

"Fucked up." Dean looked down at her hand and that should have been enough to make her stop but Alice wasn't about to, even if it was just her fingers on his belly. That didn't keep his eyes from going as wide as his papa's and Alice hoped he wasn't about to start sliding off the couch because there was no way in hell she could ground him before Dean's face hit blue shag. "Sammy and I were doing some recon training in Minnesota. Just some stupid exercise I set up in the woods while Dad was researching a case."

"And there was something out there?" Alice spread her hand across the scars. "Like a monster?" No animal in her own woods had a spread like that, except for the black bears and maybe the wolves – but they never came close enough to do any harm, even when the chickens were full grown and ready to eat.

"More like a wildcat." Dean shook his head. "Damn thing got me in the gut before I could get a slice in." He stretched his arms, the muscles in his abdomen shifting underneath her palm. "Sam managed to get me back to where we were staying and had me halfway patched up before Dad got there." He sucked in a breath and Alice lowered her head, seeing the whole thing play out between the blood seeping through Dean's fingers and the way the needle would shake with Sam biting his lip hard enough to keep steady. "But Dad hasn't let me hunt since."

"Maybe he was just letting you heal up?" It came out half-words and half-yawn and suddenly Alice was staring up at him from underneath heavy eyelids, covering her mouth when she yawned a second time. "Or maybe tonight your papa needed something that only Mama could do."

Dean snorted, licking his thumb and pressing it hard between Alice's eyes. "Doesn't look _too_ hard," he said.

"That's 'cause it's harder than it looks." Alice rubbed the slick spot on her forehead. "And I'm not ever gonna be able to do it." The clock struck a half hour mark right when she said it, the universe laughing because it had just let Alice Meeks know that she was only going to figure out one secret in her life – and it had nothing to do with spit being just as powerful as blood. The only thing that chime was telling her was that she should just pack up and go to bed.

She stretched out across the cushions instead, surprising herself when she rested the back of her head on Dean's thigh. Alice guessed that it surprised him, too; the way his body came off the couch before Dean settled back against the old afghan. But he was laughing, soft like his papa did before he kissed Mama.

"Dean?" Alice waited until she could see the reflection off of his eyes. "What happened to the cat?"

"The cat?"

"The one that got you in the gut."

"Killed it before it could turn on Sam."

Alice couldn't say anything after that, just stared up into the glint where his eyes were until his head fell backwards and he was snoring for real. It was worse than when Dean was pretending and Alice wondered how she was going to fall asleep, with her fingers jerking all over the place and a murmur in her head telling her that any boy who could kill a wild cat with nothing but a knife was destined to be a hunter as sure as the moon sang to the tide and there wasn't a power in the earth or the wind that could stop it.

It was the knife Alice kept seeing when her eyelids fluttered closed, stuck through a spine right up to the hilt while blood spilled over a man's hand, but a metal vise had her throat clamped shut. There was a warning shout trapped in her belly that wasn't coming out, no matter how much she ripped herself apart to set it free.

The next thing Alice knew, Sam was laughing loud enough to make her eyes open and chanting something about her sitting in a tree with Dean; dancing just out of Dean's reach until Sam got to the word marriage and his older brother launched himself off the couch screaming about how little Sammy Winchester wasn't reaching the age of thirteen. Alice rolled right onto the floor, landing on her ass and pulling her dress down as quickly as she could when she caught both of them sneaking a peek at her underwear.

Dean grunted and Sam turned bright red and Alice knew she was never living down the fact that she wore panties covered with little kittens.

Alice didn't have much honor left to defend after that but she wasn't holding anything back when Dean laughed and told her that she smacked like a chick. Alice was rolling around with them right there in the middle of the carpet when Mama popped in from the kitchen to let them know breakfast was ready, hollering at the top of her lungs about how Dean was taking it back and kicking her legs whenever Sam tried to pin her with his.

It was their own damn fault, teaching Alice Meeks how to hold her own against boys and how to hold her knuckles for the perfect noogie.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The bruises around Mama's neck had already started going yellow around the edges but there were still deep purple stripes in the middle of each one.

Alice bit her lip and tried not to stare when they were passing a huge pot of oatmeal around the table but that didn't keep her eyes flickering between Mama's red scabs and the bandage John wasn't even trying to hide, sitting at the table in a white tank top like Papa used to wear during the summer.

Even Sam made her feel like a stupid kid, slurping down spoonfuls of oatmeal covered in brown sugar and milk and grabbing handfuls of bacon off the platter without even batting an eye when he saw his papa's bandage – like his papa showed up sporting one every morning the same way John Winchester wore that leather jacket of his when it was snowing outside. There was nothing to do but follow Sam's example, mechanically chewing on a piece of toast and swallowing it down as best she could with a glass full of milk, and she would have been fine if the light coming through the window hadn't made a shine where clear liquid from the infection was seeping through John's bandage.

And Alice still would have been fine if she wasn't the one sitting next to him, close enough to smell the wound rot lurking underneath the sweet flowers Mama had picked that morning and set in the middle of the table. Shutting her eyes only made it worse, the smell mixing up with pictures of white puckered skin around crimson gashes pounding through her veins and curdling the milk in her tummy.

Alice didn't even excuse herself, just pushed back her chair and ran to the bathroom as fast as her bare feet would take her. Mama was there when Alice slammed to her knees, whispering about how it was all going to be alright and rubbing her back until the only thing coming up Alice's throat was bile that stunk enough to keep her dry heaving and she would have started vomiting up her intestines if the cool hand on her belly hadn't stopped the spasms after Alice sucked in another breath.

"I'm sorry." Alice sat back on her heels, closing the lid on the toilet bowl, and wiped her eyes. The only thing worse than puking was the crying that came along with it but that didn't keep Mama from pulling Alice into a hug. Alice gagged when something sour wafted off of Mama's neck and she tilted her head up to look into Mama's eyes. "It just smells so bad, Mama."

"What smells bad, Sweet Pea?"

"Your cuts." She swallowed and lowered her head when Mama frowned at her. Sam's face was swimming past her mama's shoulder and Alice wanted to crawl in on herself because a hunter's kid should be able keep her mouth shut and not even think about what might have happened. A hunter's kid should be able to make it through oatmeal and toast without throwing up and without asking questions because fighting and bleeding and nearly dying was as real as breakfast. She shook her head sharply. "The ones from last night," Alice added. "They stink something awful."

There was a deep sniff and suddenly Mama was lifting Alice's face with soft fingers on her chin and planting a kiss on her forehead like she was five before standing up. Mama pushed past Sam but she didn't turn down the hall fast enough, something dark in her eyes that made Alice start getting up to follow her – but Sam blocked the doorway, kneeling down next to her with a glass of water.

"Dad says you gotta sip it slow," he said.

Sam shifted to sit cross-legged when Alice snatched the glass out of his hand. It was bad enough that Sam was the one they sent to take care of her and Alice sure as hell didn't need some kid who got bitch pissy playing a board game telling her how to drink a goddamn glass of water. Alice drained the glass in one draw, slamming it down onto the floor and staring into Sam's face with a hard smile.

And Alice figured she was lucky that it wasn't Dean sitting there with her because Sam had the grace not to make fun of her when her stomach groaned and the coil twisting inside her belly had Alice back on her knees. Sam just handed her a towel when she leaned back against the wall and flashed her a smile that should have seared the nerves on the back of her eyes.

"If you thought the underwear stuff was bad, you better take a shower before Dean sees the puke in your hair."

"Why do you Winchesters think you're being charming when you're really just a bunch of jackasses?" Alice made like she was poking Sam's knee with her toe and he swatted at her foot when she pulled it back.

"We've got special skills, Sweet Pea." Dean grinned down at her, leaning against the doorjamb with his arms folded across his chest. "They're not as cool as spitting on someone but we get by." She glared at him when Sam helped her stand but Dean just licked his thumb and pushed down on her nose. He cocked his head. "Jesus Christ, Alice. It's just puke. Sam gakked a couple of months ago when Dad was showing him a dead 'shifter. His hand slipped into some goo and he didn't stop throwing up until we got him out of the sewer."

"And Dean keeled over and puked hamburgers and a chocolate shake all over Dad's shoes when he made his first kill," Sam added.

"Who the hell told you that, Geek Boy?"

"You gonna call Dad on being a _liar_?"

Dean snorted and smacked Sam on the back of his shaggy head but that didn't keep either of them from laughing. They both grabbed an arm and dragged Alice into the hall and Sam was still laughing even when her hair brushed his hand. He groaned and turned back into the bathroom to wash off the puke and Dean yanked her back when Alice tried to run down the hall.

He wasn't laughing at all and Alice shivered when his fingers touched the bare skin on her upper arm, tracing the tiny half-moons her nails had left there the night before while his jaw clenched. Dean's breath was a hiss when his eyes focused on the bite marks around one of her knuckles, gasping once like he was a kid on a playground getting sucker-punched for the first time before letting Alice's hand drop back to her side.

"There's gotta be something we can do where you aren't gonna end up getting hurt," Dean said softly. He sighed deeply, eyebrows arching up underneath his bangs as his mouth quirked up to the right and suddenly Alice was smiling up at him because there wasn't anything to do but smile back when Dean Winchester looked at you like that. "If I ask your mom about taking you to the movies, is she gonna make you sew charm bags? 'Cause hanging out with a girl doing a home economics project in the middle of _Batman Forever_ is gonna suck."

"You sure you wanna hang out with a girl who pukes in her hair?"

"I'm not taking you anywhere until you get a shower. I'm drawing the line at hanging out with a girl who stinks." He smirked at her.

"Jackass."

Dean chuckled and jammed his hands into his jean pockets, bumping into her shoulder before turning on his heel and walking back towards the kitchen. He was humming that stupid Metallica song that he loved so much, the one about never never land and monsters under the bed – a fitting lullaby for a boy whose mama was thrown up on a ceiling and gutted like a fish. Alice wiped at her eyes and her head was full of dandelion fuzz, listening to Dean's voice dip down into the lower registers, but she didn't realize that she had said his name until Dean stopped and looked at her over his shoulder, the smirk giving way to something else when she padded after him and tugged on a sleeve.

Alice hitched up on her toes and Sam Winchester was the only reason she didn't kiss Dean's cheek right then and there, bursting into the hallway and demanding to go with them to the movies.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

John Winchester never stayed in one place too long, wandering back roads like an old storm crow getting chased by lightning.

Mama always joked about how he was a better weather vane than the metal one on the house, that you could track the direction of the rising wind based on the way he said good morning over coffee and figure out whether John and his boys were staying for two days or three if you watched how much sugar John poured into the cup.

But the Winchesters were still sitting around the kitchen table come Monday morning, John glaring at her mama over coffee while his sons shoveled biscuits and gravy into their mouths like they were starving. It didn't matter how hard he frowned at her; after those cuts of his went hot with bloody puss, there was no way that Mama was about to let John Winchester out of her sight until the wounds had healed.

"The world's out there waiting for you," Mama said. She sipped her tea slowly, a laugh in her voice that didn't make it to her eyes. "But you'll have a better chance making it across the state line when you're not risking septicemia."

John narrowed his eyes, hard little stones sitting above a grimace, and stared Mama down while he clenched the fist sitting next to his coffee cup. She stared right back, the muscles working in her jaw as she stirred more cream into her tea. It wasn't a secret, the way that John Winchester's hunt was fueled by vengeance more than it was fueled by anything else, and even folks passing through Mama's store could tell you the legend of a man who drove through the heart country with two motherless boys and a trail of dead monsters in his wake.

Jane Meeks wasn't part of that legend, the widowed woman raising her daughter in a different story, but that never kept her from loving the man who was. Watching them turn away from each other made Alice's throat hurt as much as watching Sam and Dean grab sausage links off the platter, all greasy fingers and milk on their upper lips and both of them daring Alice to do it with the same grins on their face. But the way John was frowning at Mama, they would be gone before dinnertime.

"I'm gonna be late for school," Alice said, pushing her chair back from the table.

Alice grabbed her backpack from the hall and stumbled out the door, running down to the county road without even saying goodbye. The bus crested the hill as Alice shot out past the bushes and she kept her head low no matter how loud Sam was calling her name until she was walking down the aisle towards a seat in the back, sliding behind Barbara Jean and pasting a grin on her face. Sam's long legs and wild hair danced in Alice's peripheral vision, chasing the bus until she turned to wave goodbye.

"He's a cutie." Barbara Jean nudged Alice's elbow. "But don't you think you're robbing the cradle?"

Alice snorted. "You study for Mr. Bryant's test yet?"

Barbara Jean giggled and shook her head, launching into a story about how Timmy Edwards from Science class could make a girl squirm with nothing but his hand hitting all the right places on the outside of her clothes. She wasn't about to tell Barbara Jean that Dean Winchester could do that just by bumping a girl's knee or brushing tiny cuts with his fingers. Alice leaned her cheek against the window, the glass cool against her skin, and smiled – but her cheeks still ached when Miss Smits started making Monday morning announcements in home room.

Alice could have cared less about the bake sale for band camp but it was something she could pretend to be focusing on when Barbara Jean began asking Alice questions about her weekend. And Barbara Jean was still trying to weasel out answers when they both walked out the front doors of the school, laughing when something big and black stopped Alice dead in her tracks.

The damn car wasn't exactly inconspicuous, stretched out right next to the curb.

Sam was hanging out of the passenger window, waving at her like a lunatic and screaming her name, but Dean was leaning against the retaining wall near the main sidewalk with his arms folded across his chest. Barbara Jean snickered and excused herself, telling Alice she needed to spend some time alone with her new boyfriend before Ginny Phelps moved in for the kill. The head cheerleader was actually standing next to Dean, tugging down on the edge of her top and showing more cleavage than was probably allowed in the dress code, and Dean didn't even try to hide his grin.

Alice grit her teeth when Ginny laughed, looking up at Dean from underneath her eyelashes. The only thing worse than being stuck in the back seat of the Winchesters' car listening to Ginny chatter on about being the queen of every girl who shook a pom-pom at Shelton High was watching Dean flirt with Ginny on the way home from school.

It was bad enough that he had already sweet talked Ginny Phelps into her mama's shed the last time the Winchesters had showed up on the Meeks' doorstep. Alice Meeks wasn't going to watch it happen all over again just because Dean Winchester had less sense than a gnat when there was a girl showing off her tits. She had no problem slapping him silly if that's what it took to keep him out of Ginny's white daisy dukes.

And it wasn't because she was _jealous_ or anything.

Boys sparked with girls all the time, riding towards the push and the pull of the tide because there was nothing like that rush of the waves breaking against the shore. Alice enjoyed the ride the same as everyone else, letting Chuck Trelawny get his hands up her shirt underneath the bleachers during a baseball game. It probably would have gone farther than that, her nipples crinkled against his palms, but a flashlight and a shout made them both scatter and run.

Dean was lucky she didn't have a flashlight of her own because Alice would have chucked it at Dean's head the second he started laughing at whatever Ginny was saying. She couldn't get that much distance with her back pack. Alice sucked in a breath and started walking.

"You like taking your own sweet time, don't you?" Dean drawled as soon as Alice was in earshot. He pushed off the wall without giving Ginny Phelps a backwards glance, walking past her to grab the strap on Alice's backpack. He slid it down her arm and slung it over his shoulder easier than Running Bear could pull back a bow.

"I didn't know there'd be a welcoming party," Alice shot back. "And I didn't wanna interrupt your conversation."

"Jenna was trying to get back into your mom's shed tonight." The damn boy was smirking at her. "Jealous?"

"Why the hell would I be jealous of _Ginny_ Phelps?" she snapped, as sharp as the way their parents watched each other over cups of tea and coffee.

Dean shrugged his shoulders. "Beats me, Sweet Pea," he said, opening up the back door and pushing her backpack inside. "But I don't understand why you're looking at me like I cut off your arm or something instead of thanking me for taking time out of my busy schedule just to pick you up."

Alice slammed the door, leaning onto the front seat to rest her chin on her hands – one elbow touching Dean's shoulder and the other one touching Sam's. Dean looked at her, waggling his eyebrows because he knew she was going to forgive him. Dean Winchester could walk into a room and have everyone smiling no matter the half-assed things he said, overflowing with the charm of a trickster caught up in that grin even when Dean was spouting crap that made her want to throttle him.

"Because taking time out of your busy schedule just to pick me up when you could be sitting around burping the alphabet and making fun of Sam is a real sacrifice." Alice rolled her eyes.

Sam snorted, ducking when Dean's hand shot out to smack his head, and rested his elbow against the window. The engine roared into high gear, scattering the group of kids walking in front of the car like tadpoles swimming away from a rock, but Ginny Phelps was still standing near the retaining wall staring at the car so hard Alice was surprised the paint hadn't started to peel.

The whole school was going to be calling her 'Sweet Pea' once Ginny got past wanting to skin Alice Meeks alive.

But some people never knew when they were the lucky ones, being able to spend a couple of hours in a shed and walk away when you were done without losing a thing that really mattered; that getting angry watching some boy you screwed drive away with the girl whose mama talked to trees was nothing compared to watching the dust spit up into the air when that car turned onto the county road and Sam was waving at you frantically through the back window.

There weren't enough paper cranes in the world to change it, to make it so Dean could always pick her up from school with Sam hanging out of the car, flailing his arms like a spastic when he saw her. They would always be the ones blowing away when it was time and Alice would always be the one left behind.

Not even Mama could make a Winchester stay once the wind turned the weather vane.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this chapter is a lyric from the song "Every New Leaf Over" by Jeffrey Foucault.


	3. Little snapshots made from breath

Sam's puppy dog eyes never changed Mama's mind, the way he'd look at her whenever Alice excused herself after breakfast.

Mama shook her head and smiled until Sam clambered out of his chair and met Alice in the hallway, grabbing her backpack before Dean could slip it over his shoulder and walking out the front door while Alice was still tying her shoes.

Alice didn't have the heart to tell him that it was a losing battle, that Mama always made her go to school. Sam just never stayed around long enough during the school year to figure that out, just like Sam didn't see the way Mama frowned at his father – hiding her concern with a kiss on John's forehead, lips touching down on the fever as she handed him a glass of iced tea laced with a willow bark tincture and enough sugar to mask the bitterness.

It was hard not feeling guilty, seeing the raggedy shine in Dean's eyes whenever Alice tumbled out of his car after school and kicked off her shoes on the front porch. Wishing she could do something besides let Sam grab her by the hand and drag her behind him to the stream, looking for crawdads in the lazy water and laughing whenever the one he was holding clamped onto the end of her braid. Dean would smile right along with her every time that sound bubbled out of his baby brother but it never reached his eyes until the night John said they were leaving on Sunday morning and Mama didn't say a word, handing out pieces of peach cobbler for dessert.

It was worse smiling back when she managed to hit a bulls-eye after dinner, shooting into a warm breeze that made Mama's wind chimes dance, but Alice could lie as easily as Dean Winchester when she had to; seeing the road in his blood as thick as it was in his papa's veins when he grinned at nothing but the sky.

"That's two in one week," Dean said, thumbs hooked into the waistband of his jeans. "If I were that piece of Styrofoam, I'd start getting scared."

"Your ass is bigger than a bull's-eye," Alice retorted, setting her bow on its stand. She stretched her arms up over her head, the grass cool against her heels, and closed her eyes; feeling the brush of a leaf against her cheek with another ring of the chimes.

"So what's that nasty patch of grass telling you, Sweet Pea?" Dean's whisper was right in her ear, prickling the hairs on the back of her neck.

"That you're gonna go on a picnic with me and Sam tomorrow," Alice managed. Her goddamn voice cracked when she said it, Dean chuckling into the curve of her neck as he reached around her and picked up her bow.

"Bet Sam would be just as happy reading a book on the porch."

"I promised that I'd make him chocolate cupcakes 'cause he won't be here on his birthday." Alice's arms folded around her stomach when his breath came out in a huff, his eyes stormier than they had any right to look. "And it's not like you asked me to do jack, Dean."

There was only so much waiting Alice could stand, hoarding it for when it really mattered and she had no choice but to hope she'd wake up to the smell of spaghetti sauce.

"Son of a _bitch_," Dean muttered, stomping towards the shed with the bow in one hand and her quiver full of arrows in the other.

He looked at her over his shoulder when he opened the door, shaking his head when she didn't move. There was no way in hell that Alice Meeks was following Dean Winchester into that building, staying three steps behind him like she was a puppy that was supposed to heel.

But those feet of hers had a mind of their own and Alice was standing in front of the door when it whipped open, staring up into his startled face as Dean barreled into her. He caught her before they crashed to the ground, rolling with the fall so that she landed on him in a tangle of arms and legs and her dress skimming her thighs. The fancy move didn't keep Dean from getting the wind knocked out of him and Alice guessed something was bruised, the way he hissed when her head bounced on his shoulder blade.

And the ground didn't open up and swallow her whole, no matter how hard she wished for it.

"You really want me to go to that picnic?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I might consider going if there's gonna be chicken pot pie." Dean tightened his arms. "But if I'm stuck underneath that freaking tree watching you and Samantha make daisy chains and feed each other cupcakes, I'm not gonna be eating any of that freezer crap."

"You just wanna kill the chicken."

"Hell, yeah! Sam's gonna scream like a girl when I kill the chicken."

"_You_ screamed like a girl the first time your papa killed a chicken." Dean had taken one look at the headless body spurting blood as it ran around in a crazy circle and shrieked so loud that Mama dropped her flower basket on her way from the garden, ripping a strip from her shirt like Dean was the one bleeding. "So much for being some tough hunter kid," Alice added.

"I wasn't the one hiding behind someone every time the damn thing moved." His voice was a squeak. "It's coming straight for us, Dean. Make it stop. Make it stop. It's gonna bleed all over my dress." Dean snorted. "So much for being some tough farm kid."

"Don't make me hit you, Dean Winchester."

That only made him start wheezing from laughing so hard.

Her hair fell around them when she leaned forward, giggling every time he squealed 'make it stop' and 'it's gonna bleed all over my dress' in a stupid high-pitched voice. But she caught her breath when their eyes met and he stopped laughing, the ripped denim of his jeans scratching the inside of her thighs – and she swallowed hard when his fingers brushed her shoulders, slipping underneath the straps falling down on her upper arms. Her hands were on either side of his head and Alice waited for the grass pressing against her palms to tell her _something_, for the earth to ground her when Dean breathed the one question she wasn't about to answer with a 'no.'

Sam's voice cut through the wind, sharp enough for them both to jerk.

There was nothing to do but sigh and stand up when Sam started calling their names, yelling about how it was time for more cobbler with ice cream and how it was time for them to lose _The Game of Life_ all over again.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The sunlight filtering in through the front curtains woke her up, warm on her back as Alice curled up on the couch.

Sam was sacked out on his stomach in the middle of the living room floor, surrounded by M&amp;Ms. Dean was sleeping with his legs stretched out in front of him, leaning against the couch, and his head rocked forward every time he snored; mumbling about five more minutes and stop hogging the blankets until his head tilted backwards. She tried to fall back asleep, focusing on the words for those seconds when Dean jerked himself awake, but they didn't drown out the rhythmic creak of her mama's bed any more than the birds outside; breathy sighs and John Winchester's moan rumbling through her belly, the burn making Alice's skin itch.

She sat up slowly and slipped a pillow behind Dean's head, throwing her grandma's daisy chain afghan over Sam as she padded into the kitchen.

There was enough chicken in the freezer for two pot pies, already cooked and cut up into chunks. Alice left the plastic container in the sink, soaking in cool water, and grabbed two metal buckets and some gloves on her way outside. It was too soon for fresh vegetables so they'd have to make do with canned ones from the pantry but Mama was always lucky when it came to her berries, ripening faster than anywhere else in the county and twice as sweet cooked up into a pie.

It was just as easy making up crust for three as it was for two.

Even with the gloves and all those mornings watching Mama hum while blackberries fell into her bucket, Alice still managed to get scraped up and her dress ripped when it got caught on one of the bushes. Dean burst out laughing when she stumbled back into the kitchen with her stained lips and a dress showing more thigh than he'd ever see on the farm outside of Mama's shed, looking up from his bowl of corn flakes with a strangled snort, until he saw the cut on her cheek. He grabbed the buckets and had her sitting on a chair before Alice could blink, dabbing at her cheek with a fresh washcloth dipped in warm water.

"Jesus Christ, Alice," he said, pulling a branch out of her hair. "I think the bush won."

"Got enough blackberries for a pie," she retorted. "I think that makes us even."

"You're one crazy chick," Dean whispered, mapping the length of a scratch down her arm with the rough pad of his index finger. "But I love me some pie."

Alice touched his wrist, blushing because goddamn _Dean_ was smiling down at her like she was one of those girls who flirted back instead of the idiot sitting there with welts springing up on her legs and twigs knotted in her hair because she was too stupid to change clothes before picking berries. It wasn't playing fair, teasing her with nothing but the curve of his lips and the way one hand on her shoulder could make her tremble, and she tilted her head up when Dean leaned in closer.

Maybe he was going to kiss her instead of always teasing her about it, a promise in his smile – but Sam stumbled into the kitchen, his hair standing up all over the place and Dean jerked his hand back like she was a hot potato, that smile turning into a smirk.

"It's too bad your mom's spit doesn't work on cuts," he said.

The only thing keeping Alice Meeks from kicking Dean Winchester in the shin was his little brother, eyes blinking furiously at them.

"Jackass," Alice muttered, pushing past Dean hard enough to knock him backwards.

"Great timing, Bozo," Dean snapped as Alice stomped into the hall.

They were already arguing by the time Alice reached the stairs, spitting and hissing like snakes; spitting and hissing just like the voices inside Mama's room, urgent whispers cutting through her sharper than knives as Alice rummaged through her dresser for a clean set of clothes.

Sam and Dean were still arguing when Alice stepped out of the shower, every cut stinging from the soap and the water; the cracks in Sam's voice fighting against the growl in Dean's until their papa's sandpaper admonition about being guests in someone's home shut them up, a jagged 'be packed in fifteen minutes' that sent Dean sprinting up the stairs and Sam stampeding right after him.

They ran past Alice like she was some phantom girl, haunting the hallway with wet hair dripping onto her shoulders, but Alice wasn't sure what hurt worse when Mama stepped out of her bedroom with an armful of sheets and eyes just as full as they had been on the day Papa was buried.

And Alice wasn't sure that she was going to forgive John Winchester so easy for making her mama look like that, for ruining Sam's birthday picnic by leaving a day early. Sam's muffled sob made Alice's throat ache, resting her hand on the guest room door when Dean promised to buy his baby brother chocolate cupcakes on his birthday because it was the closest she could get to touching them.

She followed them down the stairs, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from crying herself when Sam wiped his nose with the back of his hand. John was holding Mama in the hallway – one arm wrapped around her waist and a hand cradling the back of her head. Alice's fingers twitched when John's dark eyes met hers, a whisper of blonde hair and a scream flickering in her chest. It was the old ghost, the one that made him a legend barreling down back roads in a car that growled like the Devil.

"Put your things in the car, boys," he said.

They didn't say a word, Sam marching out after Dean. The wind caught the front door and slammed it into the clapboard wall outside, wind chimes fighting with each other, but all John did was lower his head. Mama rested her forehead on his chest and maybe he would have stayed if she had asked, maybe she could have stopped the wind if she could see his eyes full of apologies, but Mama just lifted her head and sighed; her hands clenched into fists near her hips and a whispered 'stay on the back roads' to hold them over, John's big fingers grazing the scabs on her throat before his mouth dipped down as penance.

Alice could feel fingers herself, rough pads touching down on the half-moons cut into her arms, when the trunk of the Impala slammed shut. Dean was leaning against the car, next to Sam – both of them watching her through the screen door, identical poses with their arms folded across their chests and hips jutting out to keep their balance.

She ran down the porch steps without looking back. Sam was closest, eyeing her warily as she pounded across the grass and he stiffened when she threw her arms around his shoulders, kissing his cheek. He tasted like salt and smelled like sweat and a strangled noise burst out of him when she kissed his cheek a second time.

"You keep each other safe, okay?" Alice swallowed. "For me."

"Okay," Sam hissed, disentangling himself from her arms. "But all bets are off if Dean gives me a noogie." He turned bright red and closed his eyes, body shifting on the balls of his feet as he jammed his hands into his pockets. Sam leaned forward and missed her cheek, ending up with a mouthful of wet hair for his troubles and a stubbed toe; tripping out of the way before Alice could hug him again.

Dean's shoulders slumped when the back door of the car slammed shut and Sam turned around just long enough to grab the nearest book stashed behind his head. Dean stared down at his boots.

"You gotta promise me something," she said softly, kicking Dean's boot just hard enough with a bare toe to get his attention.

"What's that, Sweet Pea?"

His eyes went wide when Alice grabbed a fistful of his t-shirt and dragged Dean's mouth down to hers, spluttering when she kissed a corner and scratching underneath his ear when Alice's heels touched grass. And his cheeks went _pink_ when Dean heard Sam laughing and it was all Alice could do to keep from blushing herself when Dean met her eyes. Feeling Mama's hot stare on her back only made it worse but Meeks' women always paid the fiddler once they started dancing.

"Promise me that you're gonna kiss me first next time."

Dean's breath hitched before he managed a chuckle. "And here I thought you were gonna make me promise not to give Sam a noogie."

"It's not fair holding someone to a promise you know they can't keep," Alice retorted, the heat in her cheeks rushing to the edges of her ears when Dean grinned down at her. "That'd be like asking you to stop throwing pistachio shells at Sam when he's trying to read or asking you not to make those half-assed jokes whenever I'm practicing with my recurve."

"Alice?"

"Yeah?"

"Shut up."

Dean's mouth slammed down on top of hers, swallowing up her 'make me' before it could even bubble out as a whisper – and a ripple cascaded through her when his tongue darted between her lips like a wriggling tadpole. There was nothing stopping a whole field full of butterflies from blowing through her belly when Dean's hands tightened on her upper arms, pulling her in close with a low laugh burning its way down to the tips of her toes and lifting her past a week of wondering what his goodbye would taste like.

John Winchester's bark of a cough brought her back to the ground.

Alice smiled weakly when Dean smirked and slipped his hands into his pockets, whistling softly as he sauntered around the car and slid into the passenger's side of the front seat. Mama's arm settled across Alice's shoulders, one hand stroking the hair at Alice's temple even though she was staring hard at the back of Dean's head with a mother's frown.

"That boy isn't like his papa, Sweet Pea." Mama said the words slow, a sigh dropping out of her like it was falling through a cloud. "He'll forget that kiss come the next town or two."

"I know, Mama. It's never gonna be anything but what it is."

Mama's breath came out in a huff and Alice lowered her head to hide from Mama's eyes when the Impala roared down the driveway. Alice Meeks was nothing more than the cold comfort of a long road. She'd watched her mama dance with a rambling man long enough to know that the dust falling back to the ground was all a Winchester left behind.

But knowing that didn't keep her from wishing just a little, laying flat on her back out in the field instead of helping Mama in the herb garden, her fingertips brushing her lips with a butterfly touch – staring up into the sun until her eyes hurt.

And it didn't keep away the stinging tears that only proved Mama right, drying up in the sun.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The first postcard showed up seventeen days later.

Every inch was covered with Dean's chicken scratch, tiny letters that could make a girl go cross-eyed just trying to read about being stuck in a motel that sucked ass while Sam got pissy about watching a Godzilla marathon – except for the little stick figure in the lower left hand corner, all shaggy haired with a book and a grumpy frown that made Alice giggle. She rested her elbows on the counter, kicking her feet against the bar of the chair, and stared down at the postscript; smiling to herself and singing along to the crackle of the old radio even when the wind and the rain outside picked up speed.

_Sam still wants to go on that fucking picnic – so don't forget that you owe me pie._

The screen door banged open thirty minutes past closing time, just like Mama said it would before she drove out to Phelps, and Naomi Baker was standing there watching Alice from the doorway with narrowed eyes, water dripping off her uneven bangs. She was wearing faded overalls and steel-toed boots, with the same salt and pepper hair that Alice remembered from Papa's funeral. But the scar was new, a jagged edge ripped deep enough to make the left side of Naomi's face sag – and Alice's throat hurt when Naomi smiled at her, the right side of her mouth quirked while the left side did nothing at all.

"Last time I was here, you were chasing around butterflies in pigtails." Naomi sauntered past the bookshelves and the case full of charms, leaning on the counter. "Where's your mother, child?"

It wasn't right to stare but that didn't keep Alice's eyes from flickering along the angry red streak where something had torn through flesh and muscle, her fingers twitching as fast as Alice could blink; hoping it looked like she had something in her eye. And it wasn't like she could turn away if she wanted to, not with her fingers fluttering like hummingbird wings on her thighs and that shadow of a man looking at her over Naomi's shoulder; sorrow burned into his skin and a shattered world in his eyes, a twist to his mouth that knew nothing was ever going to be the same no matter what he did.

"She's…" Alice shook her head sharply. "She's delivering twins two towns over but she left you something." She ducked down underneath the counter, sucking in a breath and grabbing the small bundle Mama was finishing up when Alice came back from school – binding the thick string with a knot turned just so and a flare to her nostrils that Alice had probably imagined, setting a wax seal that Mama had warned her not to crack. "You're supposed to treat it gentle," Alice managed, handing Naomi the package with down-turned eyes.

But the man was gone – an unlucky ghost coming face-to-face with the one Meeks woman who couldn't dream true – and all that remained was a tingle in her fingers drowned out by her sigh.

Naomi raised an eyebrow when their eyes met, flashing another one of her lopsided grins. "Why is it that every time I come to your mother for help, she makes me something that smells like it can wake the dead?" Naomi slipped it into a pocket. "Guess that makes it strong enough to send something back."

"Guess so," Alice said softly, spreading her hands out in front of her.

"God knows I've never been much to look at." Naomi snorted, shaking her head slowly. "Even when I was young – took a blind man to see what no one else did. But that's no cause to gawk at my face like the earth's stopped turning." She touched Alice's cheek. "Saved a lot of people fighting the thing that did this."

She said it with pride, the same way Dean would talk about his papa taking out a revenant with nothing but a sawed-off shotgun and some rock salt – the silver lining buried deep inside all of the scars and all of the bruises and all of the lonely days traveling through a world that only a handful of people believed in, a clean thing pulled out from the losses that scattered good people into the dark. Even Papa had wandered until he had a wife and a daughter and a rambling farm to come back to.

Alice swallowed.

"Naomi?"

"Yes?"

"Do you wanna stay for dinner?" The words tumbled out, her tongue tripping over itself just trying to get them out before Naomi could turn on her heel and saunter back out the door the way she'd come in. "Mama made me beef goulash 'cause of the storm and I can't eat it all by myself." Alice stretched her arms up over her head. "And I could fix up the guest room for you if you need a place to sleep."

"How can you think about eating after spending all afternoon sitting next to that charm?"

"Mama's tinctures smell worse and I have to drink those every time I get sick." And nothing would ever turn Alice's stomach again like the stink coming off of John Winchester's arm.

Naomi laughed, squeezing Alice's hand. "Wish I could stay, child, but there are things I need to do."

Alice shivered when Naomi looked up at the clock. It might as well have been the witching hour, a night dangerous enough for a woman to carry a charm wrapped in butcher paper just to see her through wherever she was headed. She watched Naomi walk out the door, raising her hand instead of waving when Naomi smiled at her, and waited until she couldn't see the taillights of Naomi's battered truck before sliding out of her chair.

The dust was heavy, marking the soles of her feet as she walked across the shop and locked it up tight – and Dean would have laughed and spent all night teasing her about being a girl when she took that postcard of his back into the house and slid it underneath her pillow.

But even falling asleep with her palm touching the rough side of the paper didn't keep Alice from calling Chuck Trelawny in the morning.

It wasn't like she was ever going to bake Chuck a pie.

 

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The only thing worse than riding the bus during a snowstorm was walking through one, with her feet jammed into oversized plastic boots and a scarf wrapped around her head and waddling around like a duck when things got icy.

It was the wind more than anything else, spraying angry snowflakes into her face and leaving behind tiny pinpricks that stung like a swarm of little bees. There were days when Alice wished the Meeks lived closer to town, when the bus made its last stop at the Vliet crossroads instead of going down the county road like it usually did and the walk home became a rite of passage underneath a darkened sky. Mama always had hot cocoa waiting for her in the kitchen by the time Alice had thrown her backpack onto the floor and unzipped her boots, slipping off her wet socks and her old coat, but it still took two cups with extra marshmallows before her hands warmed up.

The snow had stopped falling by the time the bus dropped them off in front of the mill but the wind whistled louder than a blue jay as it flew through bare branches.

Alice said goodbye to Barbara Jean and trudged down the county road, head bent as she followed a fresh tire track and her scarf covering everything but her eyes. That still didn't keep the snow from blowing up into her face, the heat of her breath keeping her nose hairs from freezing even when the cold air cut through her lungs with an icy ache.

A lump that might have been a car was sitting at the turnoff into the driveway and a single set of footsteps led to the house. She gave up trying to match the stride after she fell flat on her ass, losing her scarf when she had to roll over just to stand up. Alice would have left her backpack in the snow right along with it if she could have, the weight of it getting heavier the closer she got to the front door.

She was going to need a bath just to feel her _toes_.

At least she wasn't some poor hunter picking something up in the middle of a blizzard.

But the store was closed and the tracks went up the steps, losing themselves in the loose pile of snow on the welcome mat the same way hers did as she tapped her toes on the mat, and Alice could smell garlic and onions simmering in olive oil when she opened the front door. "It's just me," Alice bellowed. "School got cancelled."

She started shrugging out of her backpack, taking a warm breath full of thyme and oregano and filled with a laugh that had Alice blushing before the last person she wanted to see popped his head out of the kitchen.

Dean burst out laughing the second he saw her standing in the hallway, wet hair plastered to her forehead and cheeks burning so much that she probably looked like a boiled crawdad in her red wool coat – especially with her arms bent backwards because the goddamn backpack wasn't coming off gracefully, its nylon straps stuck on rough sleeves. And he kept right on laughing when the backpack fell on her foot with a dull thump and Alice hopped to the coat rack, stopping with a sound more like a hiccup than a laugh when she glared at him.

"Need some help?" he asked, his lips twitching.

"Not from you," Alice croaked.

Dean snorted and crossed the hall, grabbing her arms and snatching a kiss before Alice could even unbutton her coat. He didn't stop moving until she was pushed into the wall, both of them shivering when her hands slid up underneath his flannel shirt; a rough scratch of wool mittens on his skin.

"Shit," Dean whispered against her lips. "You're freezing."

"You're the idiot who started kissing me before I got my boots off." Alice rested her forehead on his chest, dropping her hands to his waist and losing herself in the earthy musk of Dean's leather jacket that had infused his t-shirt. "Mama said your papa was working a job in Pennsylvania," she said softly, tilting her head up to look at him. "Some place called Perryopolis."

"Dad wanted me to come here and score some intel on some freak of nature called a squonk. He thinks it's been kidnapping fifth graders." Dean grinned when Alice shook her head. Only a goddamn Winchester would use a word like 'intel' to describe folk tales and lumberjacks' stories and end up being the only one in the room impressed with himself, turning old legends into tools instead of seeing them for the truths they held. "Said your mom has some books about it," he added.

There was a reason why squonks dissolved into tears without one story about them hurting any creature, let alone a child; walking sorrow wrapped in boil-covered skin, bursting open when someone looked at it funny.

"Your papa is sure that it's a squonk?" she asked slowly.

"That's what the books are for. I'm supposed to bring them back tonight."

"There's no way Mama's gonna let you leave with at least two more feet of snow coming." Alice returned his grin. "And you know Mama's gonna win."

"She already has. I'm stuck here with you in the middle of the sticks until this thing blows over and I can dig the car out." He licked his thumb and pressed it down on her forehead. "Maybe if I play my cards right, your mom'll teach me that thing she does with her spit after I do that research for Dad." Dean's mouth suddenly quirked up. "And you're gonna help me, Sweet Pea."

"After you laughed at me jumping around like a spastic?" Alice slipped off her mittens, dropping them on top of the backpack, but that didn't stop the heat from spreading through her belly. Alice swallowed, sucking in a breath. "Don't think you're gonna get off easy just 'cause you know how to kiss a girl." She lowered her head, steadying her breath to the rhythm of coat buttons sliding through the holes; fingers working the polished wood. "You're gonna be lucky if I bake you a pie."

Dean scratched underneath his ear, staring at the wall.

"I was gonna help," he said slowly. "Eventually." Dean chuckled when Alice sighed and bent over to unzip her boots but he waited until she was peeling off her wet socks to drag that laugh right down; an itch that burned through her belly as hot as the windburn on her cheeks. "You woulda laughed if it was Sam jumping around like a spastic. It was fucking hilarious."

She folded her arms, narrowing her eyes. "Then how come I'm not laughing now?"

"Does this mean you're _not_ making me some pie later?"

Alice giggled, pushing up on her toes to reach his mouth. It got easier not to blush every time they did it, even with Mama humming in the kitchen while meatballs sizzled in a cast iron skillet. When the Winchesters showed up on New Year's Eve, not even _Sam_ had kept them from making out right at midnight, curled up around each other on the couch while Sam made gagging noises behind one of Mama's books on Chinese legends and their parents played out a rough dance in Mama's bedroom that all three of them couldn't ignore.

It was the itching that got worse every time she tasted him; so deep inside that all Alice wanted to do was let Dean scratch as hard and as long as he could no matter what Mama said. No matter how many warnings Mama wrapped up in a sigh or the kiss on Alice's temple when a flash of sunlight coming down hard on the back window of the Winchester's car made Alice lower her eyes, still waving as hard as she could when Sam leaned out the window and watched Mama stand with her on the porch.

And maybe she should have listened, the girl who never heard anything but the rain when the clouds opened up or the birds chirping as the sun rose, instead of ignoring full months of Mama's good intentions.

But there wasn't much that could get past the drumming in her rib cage when Dean pulled away to brush the pad of his thumb across Alice's lower lip, swollen from his hot cocoa-flavored kisses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this chapter is a song lyric from "Northbound 35" by Jeffrey Foucault.


	4. Heart held out like a tin cup

Alice hunkered down in the old claw foot tub, sliding down the rounded back until her nose was just above the bubbles, and kicked the spigot closed with her foot.

The wind was still whistling outside, hurling the snow into windows and clapboard walls when it wasn't sneaking through the cracks, but the hot water heater was operating just fine; her toes warmed up along with the rest of her and the water was so hot that her skin was turning pink just by laying in it. The hot water worked through the kinks in her shoulders from three hours hunched over research books and trying to ignore the noises Dean Winchester made chewing on the end of a pen.

Just watching him push the end of that pen between his lips made her prickly as all hell, each gust of air from the heater blowing against the goose bumps on her arms. It got so bad when Dean started sucking that Alice squirmed in her chair and turned bright red.

As soon as that damn boy slammed his book shut and yelled that he was calling his papa, Alice shot out of the kitchen and pounded up the stairs; skin slapping against worn wood until she was shucking off her clothes and stepping into the tub.

Not even a _nun_ could have stayed in that chair.

Mama hadn't exactly helped things, standing up and telling them both that researching without her was a good learning exercise – like sitting in a chair and gritting her teeth just to keep from diving at Dean across the table was going to teach Alice Meeks patience better than all those days living between his postcards, helping Mama with her charm bags while she waited for funny little stories about the real reason why Sam was always bitch pissy or the trucker Dean saw in Alabama sleeping with his boots off.

Those little pieces of paper couldn't stop the worry and the waiting, didn't take the edge off whenever Alice found Mama rocking in her chair, embroidering spells into flannel shirts and hooded jackets that she'd send to that junkyard man in South Dakota. Alice slipped surprises of her own into Mama's care packages, used books with notes in the margins for Sam and so many hours of mix tapes for Dean that Alice might as well have moved in with Barbara Jean just to get her hands on a working tape recorder, but they never made the wind blow back to Kentucky any faster than it always had.

Alice never lost the gut punch of them being gone until she could run her fingers along the side of the Winchester's big black car, waking up early in the morning and pulling back the curtains; hoping they hadn't left during the night to chase down someone else's ghosts without saying goodbye. She hoarded memories like a magpie, breathing in the mornings when she would hug Sam before breakfast until her arms ached and breathing out the afternoons when she tangled her hands in Dean's shirt just to reach his mouth. Some nights, when she was sitting on the back porch swing watching the flicker of fireflies out in the pasture, Alice could hear them arguing about who could run the fastest or who could burp the loudest.

And the first time Chuck Trelawny sweet talked her into the backseat of his car, Alice learned the secret behind every girl Dean had brought into her mama's shed. Bodies had a way of going back to the essentials and it didn't matter who you touched when you needed to feel skin against skin, when you needed to remind yourself that you were running on something besides empty. But even sprawled in his back seat, Chuck kissing her as hard as Dean ever had, Alice was coming up with a list of all the ways the leather didn't smell right and why the music sounded all wrong.

She sighed, closing her eyes and dipping down below the water; hair swirling around her head like she was a mermaid, ready to float away on sea foam if she just let go. She never lost her wits with Chuck or Ronny Jackson at the movies or anyone else the way she did just from breathing the scent off of Dean Winchester's neck.

Because there was no denying the things that mattered, the shiver when she remembered Dean's fingers brushing the half-moon scars on her arms and the way he frowned every time Dean saw those little white loops standing out against her tan; sitting on the back porch steps drinking root beer floats with Sam, an echo of 'your mom's all banged up 'cause of me' in his eyes. Dean looked away with a clench to his jaw every time Alice murmured 'it wasn't your fault' and she'd wait until Sam went back inside before throwing her arms around his neck, wishing he would believe her the harder Alice held on.

Wishing it was something other than what it was.

Alice burst back up when the pressure started burning through her chest, gasping like an old fish and flinging hair behind her hard enough to sting when it slapped her back. She pulled the plug and watched the water swirl down the drain, putting a finger in the hole – but nothing stopped a whirlpool when it was dragging something into it, even if it was just strands of red hair that got caught in the swell.

She sighed, pushing herself out of the tub, and pulled on her long underwear; arms and legs heavy from the heat.

Dean was still talking on the phone when Alice padded back downstairs in her bunny slippers, his voice a low rumble as she curled next to Mama's rocking chair and rested her chin on Mama's knee; touching the runner as the chair slowed down and Mama slipped her needle into the felt of her charm.

"Mama?" Alice pitched her voice low, taking a breath when Dean started rattling off something about redcaps using glamour – and at least _that_ made sense, a darkling fey snatching little kids off of a school playground, especially when it backed up to the woods. There were spells enough to keep Dean safe if he used them, a trickster's passel of charms that even Alice knew. She shook her head sharply. "You think the storm's gonna pass soon?"

"Storms have a way of blowing over so long as you let them run their course. All a person can do is weather one as best they can." Mama set the charm down on the table next to her chair. She brushed the wet hair off of Alice's cheek, blue eyes staring down into her face like Alice was nothing more than a windowpane. "Even when they wash you clean through to your bones."

"What…if you're not strong enough?"

"You learn to bend."

Mama touched Alice's chin and she smiled, a brittle grin sitting by itself underneath a crackling shine that never reached Mama's eyes, and the chime from the old clock rattled its way through Alice's hipbones; telling Alice Meeks to give up and give in and let the universe snap her like a twig – because if Mama had trouble bending sometimes, there wasn't enough strength in the earth or enough force in the tide to help the girl who dreamed about a boy's careless laugh.

She rose to her knees, circling Mama's neck with her arms; sucking in a breath and trying to ignore the muted taint that still spilled off of that ring of shiny scars. One tiny sob slipped out of Alice's mouth, as cold in her belly as the wind outside, and Mama's arms tightened across her shoulders. Alice choked the second one back with a shake of her head and a sigh more like a wheeze.

"The problem with Meeks women is that we feel the wind blow through us," Mama said, "Even if our feet are always on the ground."

"I don't feel nothing but stupid."

"Falling in love with a force of nature is in your blood, Alice, and that boy of yours is nothing if he's not a force of nature." Mama laughed softly, kissing Alice's forehead. "And I'm bone tired from trying to warn the two of you off of each other."

Alice jerked, sinking back onto her heels and glaring up into Mama's face. "But he's not my – " she spluttered. "And I _don't_! I fool around just as much as he does." Her voice was a hiss, a spitting boil until Mama's mouth quirked up and Alice lowered her eyes; flopping against Mama's leg like she was a balloon losing air. "Even if I did, Mama," she added softly, "Dean wouldn't ever – "

"Dean wouldn't ever what, Sweet Pea?" he asked lightly from the kitchen doorway.

Alice swallowed, shoulders jerking a second time. She heard the smile on his face before she looked over her shoulder, watching Dean stroll into the living room carrying a tray with the chocolate cream pie Alice had whipped up for dessert and enough plates and forks for all three of them.

He set it down on the coffee table, grabbing Alice's hand when she stretched her arms and yanked her towards him – handing her the pie server so that Alice could give a piece to Mama before making a plate for herself. Dean smiled at her like all those girls he used to parade into Mama's shed meant nothing, just warm skin on cold days when you had nothing better but to make do.

Alice smiled back when Dean slipped his arm across her shoulders, waiting for Mama to head into the kitchen and make hot cocoa, and he was the one who squirmed like he had an itch to scratch when Alice leaned into him; sliding a finger covered with chocolate cream between his lips.

Until he started sucking on the tip of her finger like it was a goddamn ballpoint pen.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

He looked like a ghost stretched out on the floor, with his pale skin washed out from the flickering hiss and crackle off the television and the shadows underneath his eyes that only came out in the dark.

Dean's eyelids had started closing halfway through _Gremlins_, even with most of a chocolate cream pie rumbling in his belly and a joke dying on his lips, and he was already asleep when Alice finished up the stitching on the last charm Mama had left her with before going up to bed – a sachet full of dried lavender that Alice didn't think twice about sewing until Dean twitched, spilling over with a moan that stuck inside her belly for all the wrong reasons. There was fire trapped in that sound, fire and loss and the whir of tires on the highway singing two little boys to sleep.

Alice slipped the sachet underneath his ear, watching Dean with her knees tucked in tight to her chest, but he didn't rest easy until the television station she'd been ignoring turned to static; a motel room lullaby that made every muscle sag.

The stretch in her legs burned as she stood up to turn off the light, pushing off the floor with both hands. She didn't even think about turning off the television, the way it made him relax in ways that one of Mama's remedies couldn't, and she probably should have tossed Gram's afghan on top of him instead of leaving it bundled on the couch. She probably should have slinked off to bed, tucked underneath her comforter and a whole pile of blankets pulled up to her neck; just the whistling wind to keep her company as she drifted off to sleep.

Lying right back down next to him, head on his shoulder and one arm curved around his waist, was the one thing she shouldn't have done but Dean was warmer than Alice thought he'd be and she only shivered from the way he smelled; the smallest hint of hot chocolate from the tiny brown spots on his t-shirt mixing with the lavender until she was yawning, burrowing underneath his arm as it came around her and she pressed her nose into his chest.

Alice slipped her hand up underneath the shirt, feeling the heat except where those three scars of his laid their tracks across his belly, and sighed. There was nothing to keep her from curling her right leg around his, listening to his quiet snores; waking up to fingers grazing slowly from her hip down her thigh. She blinked, her eyes focusing on Dean's grin as it widened, like she was the canary who'd jumped into the cat's mouth all on her own, but all he did was lean up onto his elbow.

"Morning," Dean drawled.

Alice tilted her head up, balancing herself on her own elbow and tracing wide circles onto his belly with her fingertips just as slow as that straight line he was still scratching up and down her hip – and there was a crack in her voice that she didn't try to hide, not with all that blood rushing to her face when he leaned in close.

"It's not morning yet, you yoo-hoo."

"The sun's coming up."

"That's just the moon reflecting off the snow."

Dean snorted, tucking a tangle of hair behind Alice's ear. "You got an answer for everything, don't you?" He chuckled, touching her lips with an index finger.

But he wasn't even _trying_ to kiss her.

Not that she really blamed him, lying there with a girl whose long underwear was a size too big, hand-me-downs from Running Bear's daughter complete with little yellow daisies on them, and sporting the same pair of bunny slippers he'd been teasing her about since she was thirteen.

All she was doing was embarrassing herself, trying to keep her palm flat on his stomach while she looked up at him because the damn thing wouldn't stop trembling, fluttering like the dragonflies buzzing in her chest. It would have been easier to stop if he wasn't so warm; if Dean Winchester didn't taste like the best parts of summer when her mouth settled onto the curve of his neck, her tongue licking a stripe all on its own while her hand slid backwards to his hip.

"Can't tell you why the boy who's screwed half the girls in my class treats me like I'm made out of glass," she said softly.

Dean sucked in a breath, his entire body jerking as Alice hitched up; one hand moving to his back and only stopping when her fingers touched tape – gingerly brushing a thick bandage and she winced when Dean hissed. She sat up, tugging his shirt off as gently as she could to get a better look.

Even in the flickering light of television static, Alice could see that it was a bone bruise; dark from the trauma of something hitting so hard it vibrated down to the bone, blue-black stripes showing off his ribs.

"How…"

Alice swallowed, shaking her head sharply. Ten different things off the top of her head could strike a man that hard, could send him reeling to the ground in a defenseless heap, and every single one of them was crowding around them in the dark. Seeing all the different pieces and parts when she closed her eyes, shivering when she saw a glistening bone spur jutting out from a bulging elbow, but she couldn't tell whether or not it was from blood or the poison.

"You had me researching something stupid all night for no reason," she managed. "And I coulda told you every spell Mama knows about redcaps instead of wasting all that time looking up _squonks_."

"Doesn't hurt all that much," Dean answered. And he was staring at something past her shoulder when Alice looked at him. "Your mom said I was gonna be fine." He grinned suddenly, a skull's smile underneath dark circles where his eyes should be. "So there's nothing for you to worry about."

"Jackass," she spat out.

"The fuck?"

"I'm never gonna stop worrying about you, Dean Winchester." Alice's hand trembled on his cheek and the smart thing to do would have been to bite her tongue off when Dean's eyes widened instead of taking another goddamn breath before opening her mouth again. "I don't make pies for anyone but you." It was her turn to stare at something other than his face, hiding the traitorous shimmer on her cheeks. "I wouldn't even make a pie for _Sam_ if he asked me to and he means more to me than just about anyone I know."

She couldn't hear Dean breathe when her mouth finally snapped shut, feeling like a broken leaf whipping around in the storm all by itself and shriveling when the cold hit her stomach, but he bunched the fabric of her shirt with one hand until it was tight across Alice's back; pulling her down until she was sprawled on top of him. He hissed again when his back hit the floor but Dean was smiling at her all the same, fingertips playing against her breasts until tiny nubs strained against cotton and Alice was pulling the shirt up over her head; daring Dean to stop with a kiss that darted past his lips.

But the one boy who wouldn't run from a wildcat just scratched down her back, taking her with him as he rolled onto his side; his soft lips replacing his fingers as he curled one hand into the elastic waistband of her long underwear. Alice shivered, her body arching into his mouth as his hand slipped lower – a slow burn between her thighs when rough skin met slick.

The button at his waist popped out with just a flick of her thumb, slipping through the hole as easy as the sigh into her mouth. It was the zipper that caused all the problems, getting stuck halfway down, and Alice's cheeks flushed as she tugged; her whole body going as red as it could when Dean chuckled, his free hand coming down to help hers, but he stopped laughing when she looked at him.

"You sure about this, Sweet Pea?"

"Now's a fine time to ask." Alice wrapped one hand around his neck, bringing his mouth down to hers while her other hand slid into his boxers. His cock was warm and heavy and softer than she expected, both of them gasping when her fingers circled the shaft; her mouth opening up to his like a bud in the morning sun. "What with our hands down each others pants and all," she whispered, close enough to his lips that she could feel the curve of his smile warm against her mouth.

"You're never gonna shut up," he murmured, circling her clit with his thumb.

She opened her mouth but all that came out was a squeak, her blood stuttering with an uneven pulse, Dean's fingers dancing inside the secret places he'd never touched no matter how many nights he dragged her into the backseat of his papa's car and kissed her until it hurt. He was breathing ragged every time her hand moved, biting his lip when their eyes met and coming in her hand with one buck of his hips, salt and wet spilling up onto his stomach in ropy strands. Watching her even when he was done, waiting for Alice's body to flutter against his hand in the slow swell that came afterwards, her head falling forward with a soft cry.

Dean kept right on watching her when she rested her head on the carpet, hoping it was too dark to see her blush when he smiled down at her and tangled both of his hands in her hair; pulling her in close enough to smell both of them mixed in together, his sticky belly touching her sweat-covered one as she hooked her leg around his and placed one hand on his hip, listening to his heart stumble.

"The sun's really coming up now," he said softly.

"That's still the moon reflecting off the snow."

"I hope so 'cause your mom's gonna kick my ass when she sees her half-naked daughter sacked out on the floor with me. Right after she makes us go take showers." Dean snorted. "She might even kick _your_ ass for seducing me. Anyone ever tell you that men go crazy for chicks in bunny slippers?"

Alice giggled, kissing Dean's shoulder. His smile widened into a grin and the only ghost in that room was the one rattling the windows, an angry black wind exorcised with nothing but the way he captured her laugh with his.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The icicles had started melting all on their own during breakfast before the snow had the chance to start playing catch-up, blown into drifts by the wind that still howled its way through the cracks, but the patchy growl of the snow plow going down the county road brought a frown to Mama's face while she stirred cream into her tea.

That didn't keep her from dragging Dean out to the shed, both of them showing up on the back porch with shovels while Alice set up the double boiler. Dean stomped through the kitchen, pinching her ass when she was bent over looking for the dipping vat and the dipping frames, and slammed the front door behind him before Alice could smack his arm – but Mama stayed in the back, piling more snow onto her tulip and daffodil beds so the bulbs could grow up healthy.

Melting beeswax always made the house smell like honey, all those mornings full of oatmeal and orange juice before Papa's last hunt, and there was something as close to peace as one could get without being a bodhisavatta when you were dipping wicks into the wax; watching the build-up until you were holding candles where a piece of string used to be, heating up the wax for one final dip to make them shiny.

Even Mama couldn't have done a better job on the candles, not one speck of dust in all four batches and every single one of them smelling as sweet as the last when Alice brought them into the shop.

She was cutting the first set of candles from the frame when the bell rang, the welcoming smile on Alice's face staying put until her cheeks felt like they were cracking. A woman with a red lips slicing across her white face was walking towards the counter slow and careful; a measured gait, like it was a dance and she was the only woman in the world who knew all of the steps.

"So you're the little Meeks girl," she said, tilting her head while her smile got wider and Alice shivered. The light was playing tricks because no woman that pretty would ever have a dark mark that shimmered on her wrist when she walked across the sigil Mama had hidden under a braided throw rug. "The one who ties her wishes on branches and believes that they'll come true."

"Who…" Alice shook her head sharply. "What… How…can I help you?"

"The question you should be asking yourself, Alice Betony Meeks, is how I can help you." The woman made a clucking noise at the back of her throat. "Your mother's done nothing but fill your head with silly notions about raising power and dancing naked underneath the moon." She touched the nearest candle of the rack, her smile as sickly sweet as old cotton candy when it flushed a brilliant crimson. "The only power you need, little one, is the power you take for yourself from the edge of a knife."

Alice blinked but the candle was still just as red as it had been after the woman's finger traced a line down it. And the woman just laughed, curdling deep inside Alice's belly when that cold hand touched her cheek, wound rot clinging to her fingers, and everything inside of her was screaming to run if she could only open her mouth to yell.

"It's blood you'll need on the night your heart breaks." She sighed. "Better theirs than yours."

"You…" Alice swallowed hard as she leaned onto the counter, spreading her hands flat in front of her and feeling the scratch on her palms. It was something to hold onto when the woman frowned, cutting through her sing-song voice and old words that flittered in the back of Alice's skull like a long-forgotten memory. "You should be leaving now. My ma – "

The front door crashed open, all splintering wood and broken metal and Dean Winchester standing in the doorway with a shotgun. He took one step past the threshold and pointed it at the woman's back, eyes as hard as stones and not one move wasted when his finger clicked off the safety button.

"Get the _fuck_ away from her."

"That's no way to treat a potential customer," the woman hissed, turning on her heel, and cut through the air with one hand. "_Permissum exsisto fessus per sulum quasi labor_."

The skin of his cheek sliced open into three neat lines but he didn't even flinch, just bared his teeth like a wildcat himself and took another step forward with blood dripping onto his collar. "I'm not saying this a third time," Dean said slowly, his voice a frozen tendril coiling around Alice's spine when he squared his shoulders. "Get away from her."

"Or you'll do – " The woman cocked her head, her body shifting on the balls of her feet.

"_Ta mi lubadh mo ghlun, an suil an Maither a chruthaich mi, an suil an Trillsech a caithad co mi_." It was a whisper from the kitchen, getting louder as Mama stepped into the store swirling a whisk in a bowl full of water. The woman's eyes widened when Mama began sprinkling the floor with a quick twist to her wrist, taking a step backwards when Mama didn't stop walking. "_An suil an Caillech a caemnaid mi, le caird agus caoimh_."

"You're a misguided fool," the woman spat, already moving towards the door.

Dean kept the gun trained on her until she was nothing but a shadow at the end of the driveway, turning onto the county road and disappearing behind one of the snow-covered bushes. "Fucking _witches_," he muttered, glancing once in Mama's direction like he'd said the wrong thing and she was going to turn him into a toad with her bowl full of salt water. He grinned when Mama smiled back and scratched underneath his ear. "Sorry about the door, Mrs. Meeks."

"Your papa told me that once," Mama replied mildly. Alice waited for Mama to tell Dean the truth, that no witch could cut a man fifteen feet away without a focus or turn candles red with just a touch, but all Mama did was laugh. "I made him help me board the place up until I could get a new one from town."

Alice's hands dropped to her legs, her whole body shaking, and the only reason she didn't fall off the chair was Mama's arm sliding across her shoulders, one kiss brushing warmth back into Alice's cheek. She was going crazy, listening to the two of them standing there having a pleasant conversation about a broken door, watching them act like that thing was nothing more than a disgruntled customer who thought her good luck charm was broken – like Dean couldn't have been killed taking on whatever that woman really was.

Like he wasn't standing there bleeding all over his jacket.

"She… She knew my name, Mama." Alice tried to get the words out without crying but her voice had a jagged edge, her nails digging into her thighs when Dean's eyes narrowed. She was bawling like a girl who didn't already know about the things hiding in the dark, a girl who hadn't seen broken bones and torn-up skin and the remnants of lives left behind in a hunter's eyes – but none of those things, tales pulled from dusty old books and passing stories, had ever known her _name_. She sucked in a breath, wiping her nose on her sleeve. "And she knew I wasn't like you."

"You're exactly like me, Sweet Pea." Mama kissed Alice on the forehead. "A Meeks woman." And when Mama hugged her, it was easier to breathe; the voices whispering in the back of her skull untangled themselves as Mama's lips touched down on skin, knots undone as easily as Mama could smile. "Now you go throw that candle in the woodstove and I'll go patch up your boy. We're not eating lunch until this place is cleansed and I've changed the wards."

Alice's mouth quirked up to the left when Mama let her go, poking the candle as Dean set the shotgun on the counter and watching it sway back and forth while the tip of her finger tingled. It was the same color as the blood on Dean's cheek, flowing out of him because of her, and the hurt of that ached worse than crying. Alice wouldn't even look at him until he coughed, a sharp bark in his throat.

"You did real good," Dean drawled, hooking his thumbs in the belt loops of his jeans. "Even Sammy peed his pants the first time he saw a witch."

"Why are all the really embarrassing stories you come up with about Sam," Alice asked softly, reaching up to touch his cheek. "You're making it sound like Sam's been hunting when he was still wearing diapers." The blood was sticky on her fingertips but it was hard not to smile back at him when Dean grinned at her, not one trace of the hunter who had stared down a dark stain walking around in the shape of a woman. "Well, you better not keep Mama waiting. She'll make you drink the willow bark tincture without anything to cut the bitter."

"_Now_ you tell me."

Alice watched him saunter into the kitchen and waited until she heard voices before she snipped the wick. The candle sent a shock through her palm, itching all the way up her arm. She slipped upstairs when Mama wasn't looking, joking with Dean while she tenderly dabbed at the cuts on his cheek with a washcloth.

She tucked the candle into the sandalwood box underneath her bed, full of Dean's postcards tied together with ribbons she had woven with protective runes and the fetishes that Running Bear would give her every time he stopped by the store and the hair clip covered in fake pearls she was wearing the first time a boy kissed her; a box full of polished stones with holes in them that Papa had pulled from the creek bed when she was a baby and pressed flowers from Mama that never lost their shape and the perfect little pine cone Sam had given her for her seventeenth birthday, the only magic Alice Meeks had to her name.

Maybe she should have thrown that candle away, burning it in the woodstove like Mama wanted and watching it melt like a fiery icicle, but she was never going to forget what that woman had said. All Alice had worth keeping was made of blood and bone and skin too easily broken – and the only power a sacrifice required was the willingness to be one.

But she bound it in a white cord overflowing with the luck of thirteen full moons and a black cord kissed with the wisdom of thirteen crones before she closed the lid, wiping her cheeks with trembling hands.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Mama caught them making out in the living room, Dean's hips pressing hers into the couch and Alice's hands roaming underneath his shirt, drowning in each other's taste as they ran towards something clean – something that didn't need to be washed away with salt and water and burning sage. Mama had to whisper spells at each window before that woman's stench went away, even if her words would always dance between the books and the dreamcatchers and the ache in her chest that Alice had spent all afternoon trying to ignore.

And it wasn't like they had spent all evening ignoring the books strewn across the coffee table or the notebook full of Spanish exercises sitting next to Alice's backpack. But there wasn't much sense in making Dean research faery lore when his papa had already moved on to a new job in Ohio that had nothing to do with redcaps and sitting around pretending to study wasn't working; laying flat on her stomach and tapping her pencil on her textbook while Dean sang Zeppelin off-key. It was damn near impossible making out the meanings of words she wasn't going to use in everyday conversation when the only thing she was concentrating on were the stupid lyrics Dean was making up to "Black Dog."

Throwing her pencil at him worked about as well as the pillow Alice had been using to prop up her textbook; by the time she figured out that the only way to shut Dean Winchester up was to kiss him, he already had her pushed into the cushions; her legs wrapped around one of his.

Mama set them to chores, making Dean finish up his packing while Alice sat on the floor next to Mama's rocking chair, copying new stitches onto a sampler until Mama stopped frowning and handed her a plain white belt to embroider.

She even made Dean pick up a needle and thread when he came back downstairs, cutting a hole down the center of a piece of felt and watching the length of his stitch; head cocked as he sat on the other side of the rocking chair, showing him the best way to sew up skin without leaving too many bruises – which stitches to use based on how deep the cut went and when to use the different salves she was sending with him to his papa, how you could tell an infection just from the smell and the way tiny red lines would creep out from the wound when the blood went hot.

"Your papa was never one for learning gentler healing, for all that he knows enough to patch up the worst parts." Mama touched Dean's temple with one hand, ruffling his hair like she used to when the Winchesters first started coming round. "You're the one who needs to teach Sam how to close up someone proper, Dean Winchester."

"Yes, ma'am."

Alice rubbed her fingers hard across her eyes, still seeing the criss-cross of scars a wildcat had left behind swimming on the backs of her eyelids – those uneven stitches rough across Dean's belly, divots where Sam's hands went unsteady. She didn't know what was worse, between the quiet way her mama told a boy all of eighteen he needed to teach his baby brother how to make scars neat or the way Dean didn't hesitate to make the promise, and even Alice could see the scars that were coming; scratched into arms and legs and all the fleshy spots that a monster could catch before the Winchesters brought it down.

There was nothing keeping Alice from kissing him no matter the way Mama's eyes narrowed when she did it, throwing her arms around Dean's neck until she stopped shaking. And the look in Mama's eyes when Alice headed up to bed, the way her mouth pursed full of warnings about rambling men and their pretty sons, wouldn't keep Alice out of the guest room.

Mama was the one always telling her that life called to life the same way the moon called to the tide.

Alice was underneath the covers, the sheets scratchy on her skin, when Dean stepped into the room wearing nothing but a towel; water droplets scattering across his chest and his shoulders with tiny sparks that made her catch her breath. His eyes flickered from her face to the small box Alice had found in his duffel bag, set out on the nightstand next to the clock.

"Alice."

"I'm sure, Dean. Never been more sure about anything."

Dean let out a tattered breath before locking the door, dropping the towel and slipping next to her; wincing when she kissed the butterfly bandages on his cheek.

"You're all cut up 'cause of me," Alice said softly.

"Just wish I had figured it out sooner." Dean pulled her in close, shivering when Alice kissed his collarbone. "We got out okay, Sweet Pea." He licked his thumb and pressed it into her forehead. "That's all that matters."

Alice hitched up to trace her tongue along the sprinkle of freckles across his nose because all that mattered was memorizing every scar with her lips and fingers, taking him into her mouth gentle until he groaned and her head bobbed and he was slipping past her lips as fast as his hips could buck. And he let Alice take what she needed, his head between her thighs as she ran her fingers through his hair and broke with a shudder against his mouth; breaking all over again when she rolled the condom down his cock. Alice had to do it twice just to get it right, biting her lip when his hand wrapped around her wrist. His eyes looked as old as his papa's for all that they carried a different ghost.

"You ever done this before?"

"I've sparked with boys some but…"

He didn't say a word, just touched her shoulder without meeting her eyes.

"But we can stop." Alice stared at the wall, watching the shadows forming from the moonlight pouring through the open curtains. She swallowed, looking at Dean through the fall of her hair, and the ice roaring through her belly had nothing to do with the frost spilling across the window like a spider's web. "I…" She was no better than any of those girls taking their pleasure out in the shed, running away from a nightmare using skin and sweat and a pretty boy's mouth. "It's not treating you fair, just showing up like this and giving you no choice but to say yes." Alice fisted the sheets in her hands. "So we can stop if you want to."

"Jesus, I don't – "

Dean pushed her hair aside, tucking loose strands behind her ear before his mouth dipped down to her breasts; sucking one and then the other before kissing a trail between her thighs – and the buzzing that sparked through her when his lips encircled her clit and Dean flicked it with his tongue, his fingers curled inside of her as he held her thighs down with his arms, was enough to melt the frozen shard in her stomach. She spread her thighs wide and bit her lip, holding onto his arms and hissing when he thrust slow past the pain; gasping when he looked down into her eyes and his pulse fluttered against hers, as swollen as blue bells after a storm when the push and the pull flowed in her belly.

She rocked with an unsteady rhythm, hipbone against hipbone as her fingernails marked his shoulders but there was no chance of matching the easy way Dean had of moving, and he was already groaning into her mouth when a smoldering ripple began its teasing dance down deep; collapsing on top of her, his entire body hot to the touch.

"Fuck…"

It probably wasn't good manners to laugh at the boy who had just turned you into something more than a girl but it bubbled out anyway when Alice wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed the top of his head. She was warm all the way down to her toes, giggling like an idiot because they were tangled up together on a bed too small for either of them, and all she wanted to do was hold on to the boy chuckling into the curve of her neck.

"Mama always says practice makes perfect."

"Yeah?" Dean snorted. "Well, see if I ever screw you again."

"You wanna make that a bet?"

"After you laughed at me, Sweet Pea, you're gonna be lucky if I eat your goddamn _pie_."

It was Alice's turn to blush when Dean grinned at her, waggling his eyebrows and swallowing up another giggle with a kiss. There were some things worth paying the fiddler for and he was one of them – worth all the months of sewing charms and making candles until her fingers were poked full of holes and covered in wax when Mama figured out what she had done. If she was lucky. Mama was probably going to set her to chores so dirty that no boy would ever want to look at Alice Meeks again, let alone one as pretty as Dean Winchester.

But Winchesters could pluck surprises out of thin air, as easy as Dean plucked sighs and moans out of her before they woke up with the sun in their eyes and the smell of bacon wafting up from the kitchen.

And he plucked out something that she never knew she could lose after Alice hugged him goodbye, leaning on the trunk of the car with her arms around Dean's waist and her forehead resting on his chest. He coughed and Alice tilted her head up to look at him; their breath making little white clouds in the spaces between them.

"Shit. I…" Dean sucked in a breath right before he kissed her; slow and tender and tasting sweeter than any boy had a right to, kissing her until Alice was clutching his collar hard enough to make her knuckles ache. He jammed his hands into his pockets when they were done, his boots crunching in the snow as he walked towards the driver's door. "I don't send postcards to anyone but you," he said, looking at Alice over his shoulder before Dean slid inside the car and slammed the door.

Mama met her halfway as Alice stumbled back up the driveway, pulling Alice in close when the roar of the Impala barreling back towards the crossroads washed Alice clean through to her bones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this chapter is a song lyric from "Shadows Tumble" by Jeffrey Foucault.
> 
> The curse used by the "witch" in Jane's shop when she cuts Dean roughly translates as "let him be wearied with every sort of hardship." I used an online English to Latin translator because I was too lazy to look up my old Latin textbooks, so I'm certain the translation is a little off.
> 
> The invocation that Jane uses to dispel the "witch" from the shop is cobbled together from the _Carmina Gadelica_ (a collection of Irish Catholic prayers), a website that modified the prayer about "cleansing" into a Pagan version, and my sorry attempts to translate the Pagan words with an English to Irish translator and replace them so that the prayer can be Goddess-centric in the language I wished to use. Obviously, I didn't use the full version of the prayer because that would have been too long for the scene. Although I am certain my translation is laughable based on how I did it and the grammar is off, the stanza I did use translates as:
> 
> _I am bending my knee  
> In the eye of the Mother who created me,  
> In the eye of the Maid who delights with me,  
> In the eye of the Crone who protects me,  
> In friendship and affection._


	5. Barely enough time to sing

Barbara Jean Benedict wasn't making it to the fireworks display in one piece, no matter how many times she grinned at Alice and swore that boys would be lining up all the way to the funnel cake stand.

She was the only reason Alice was wearing sandals, dressed up perfect like she was a doll in someone's collection – down to the light pink nail polish on her fingers and her toes, with her hair wrestled into something full of curls that hid all the bobby pins sticking into her scalp while pretending to look natural, and prancing around in a blue and white sleeveless dress pulled out of Barbara Jean's closet. Heads were turning when they walked down Main Street on their way to the Fellowship booth but Alice guessed most folks were staring because the wild girl out on that farm was showing up at the Shelton Fourth of July festival wearing make-up.

And that wasn't the worst part.

The worst part was being suckered into helping out at the Fellowship booth with Barbara Jean all afternoon, raising money for the volunteer fire department by selling cakes and cookies and pies that every mother in town had spent the last three days baking.

There wasn't anything Alice could do but say 'yes' when Barbara Jean asked, closing her eyes and seeing that old piece of faded newspaper Dean would sneak out of his papa's leather journal; all three of them could have been burned to nothing but ash that night, just like that blonde-haired ghost burned into John Winchester's eyes. No man on earth had done more to keep his boys alive, holding on as tight to his sons in that picture as he did every day since with those callused hands of his twisted into fists where his boys couldn't see.

A bake sale wasn't much compared to that.

But the Fellowship booth was surrounded by a whole flock of women when they reached the stretch of grass and trees passing for the town square, laughing while they shared recipes between slipping quarters and dollar bills into the money box underneath the table; handing out glasses of lemonade along with that morning's gossip.

Alice stopped dead in her tracks when she saw the booth next door, staring up at a shiny plastic banner waving in the breeze and proclaiming to the universe in red letters eight inches high that kisses only cost a dollar each. Someone had taken a signboard and posted a schedule on the outside of the booth, complete with girls' pictures next to the time, and it didn't take a scholar to figure out why she was standing there wearing something that she wouldn't even own – not with her senior portrait staring Alice right back in the face, her hair slick from all that gel Barbara Jean had used trying to make it look smooth instead of frizzy like a horse's tail.

Barbara Jean grabbed Alice by the arm, dragging her into the booth with 'a promise is a promise' and a giggle that would have gotten anyone else's ass kicked. Alice grit her teeth and glared at the sunburn already going pink on the back of her best friend's neck, leaning forward with a warning and trying not to turn bright red herself when Emmaline Wilson poked one of Alice's curls and laughed.

Alice grit her teeth and smiled – but the way her day was going, she was running headlong into being the laughingstock of the entire town. Every single yoo-hoo planning on snatching a kiss from her was probably eating the biggest beefsteak sandwich they could find for lunch, slathering it in greasy onions sautéed in garlic butter and covering it in Tabasco sauce for good measure – warding themselves from whatever would happen to them after kissing the daughter of that woman who could coax a bird onto her finger with nothing but a whistle.

At least Alice wasn't working a shift with Ginny Phelps.

She had enough time to get a glass of lemonade, sipping it slow while Alice watched the boys line up for their crack at half of the cheerleading squad – all three of them smiling pretty in a row and wearing their Sunday best. Alice swallowed the last of her lemonade as the lines dwindled, slipping another breath mint between her lips and smoothing her dress with her hands. Alice took a deep breath, changing places with Emmaline, and set her hands on the table to keep from keeling over.

Davy Grissom slid a dollar bill across the table at her, his friends egging him on from three feet away and scampering around like she was a two-headed snake when her eyes flickered in their direction, and Davy scrunched up his face as Alice leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. He scurried off with his friends when she was done, a length of carnival tickets trailing behind him for the rides.

"I don't even know why I'm still doing this after you tricked me," Alice whispered, grabbing another handful of money from Barbara Jean and throwing it into the bowl they were using to collect it. "The only goddamn person trying to kiss me is a ten-year-old on a bet."

"That's 'cause you're scowling at every boy who walks by," Barbara Jean hissed, her mouth curving into a smile just to prove the point when the bag boy from Vogler's handed her five dollars.

Alice rolled her eyes when Noah Harrison said he didn't want any change and Barbara Jean laughed like they were all back in kindergarten sharing crayons from the big box. Alice listened to the jangle of a dime hitting the side of the bowl and hoisted herself up just in time to see a twenty-dollar bill slapped down onto the table in front of her – a dare covered with blunt-tipped fingers, bruised knuckles scabbed over like someone had taken a cheese grater to his hand.

"So how much for some tongue?"

"That the best you can come up with after five months of nothing but postcards?" Alice snorted, brushing her fingers lightly across his knuckles. "Jackass."

Dean chuckled, that laugh of his worming its way inside – heat spreading through her belly until she was grinning back up at him, grabbing his t-shirt with one hand. Memorizing the way he tasted like beef jerky and soda and the rising wind blowing into his face as he leaned out of the open car window, her hands sneaking their way up to his shoulders and holding on tight because she wasn't letting go first. And Alice didn't stop kissing him back until Dean tangled his hands up in her hair, jerking when he got jabbed with bobby pins.

"Jesus Christ!" Dean dropped his hands to her shoulders, eyes glittering as his smile widened. "That kiss better be on the house 'cause your hair's worse than a goddamn mine field."

"It's the ones that come later that'll cost you something." Alice snatched the twenty-dollar bill off the table, handing it to Barbara Jean before she could say a word. Alice stretched up on her toes, arms behind her back as she swished her skirt. "Didn't your papa teach you that it's only polite to take a girl on the Tilt-a-Whirl _before_ you kiss her?"

"You're lucky if I buy you a funnel cake," Dean retorted. "With all that metal you're sporting for fun, we're gonna get electrocuted on the fucking Zipper if the Nirvana on that freaking bobsled ride doesn't kill us first." He cocked his head, jamming his hands into his pockets. "So are you coming or what, Sweet Pea?"

"I'm coming," Alice said softly.

She pushed her way through the circle of girls huddled around Ginny Phelps in the back of the booth, all bright eyes and hard swallows and lips twitching like someone had passed them raw lemons whenever her arms touched theirs; hugging Barbara Jean tight before Alice slid through the space between the kissing booth and the bake sale and catching Sam's eyes as he balanced three chocolate cupcakes in his hands.

Alice was already pulling the pins out of her hair, feeling it swing loose past her shoulders; throwing them on the ground and not looking back when Sam handed her a cupcake, smiling at her with chocolate frosting at the corners of his mouth, and Dean didn't jerk when Alice crooked her arm through his.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Mama always said that there were moments in your life when things stood still, when the universe stopped the world from spinning just long enough to savor the little things, but she probably wasn't talking about Ferris wheels.

Sam dragged Alice into the line, holding on tight to her wrist and grinning at her over his shoulder while Dean cracked jokes; coming up with all the different ways the damn thing would fall apart and its dingy pieces of metal would come crashing to the ground. And Dean didn't stop whispering them into her ear when Alice was squeezed next to him in the red and yellow car, his arm looping casually over Alice's shoulder. Stories about the old carnie who died setting it up fifty years ago and haunted the engine, making it jerk and stop instead of spinning in a smooth circle, or those two kids who rocked the car so hard from making out when they were stuck on the top that some screws worked loose.

When the Ferris wheel jerked to a stop, their car swaying slowly at the top, Alice squeaked and threw her arms around Dean, and it probably should have pissed her off when Sam started laughing right along with him – both of them rocking the car hard enough to make a carnie yell at them in a sharp voice that had both of them laughing even harder. But all she could do was hold onto Dean, shivering every time she could see the ground over the edge of yellow leather and the wrong kind of wind blew through her, and Alice squealed when the gears shifted and the wheel turned.

The hand at her waist started trailing up her side, fingers spreading right underneath Alice's left breast, and the hair underneath her ear stood on end when Dean chuckled.

"I'm gonna haunt you for the rest of your life after I fall off this goddamn thing," Alice hissed against his cheek.

"I think I can handle a ghost who looks like you," he retorted, licking a stripe up her neck where Sam couldn't see him do it. She twitched, tightening her arms and wrapping her leg around his with another squeak when the wheel picked up speed; her body moving just enough to make the car swing. Dean rested his chin on the top of her head. "So, Sammy?" he bellowed over the grind of the motor. "Wanna go a second time?"

"Hell, yeah!"

Alice held her breath and counted each turn of the wheel until it cranked to a final stop and the carnie opened the door. Sam hopped out of the car first, steadying her by the arm as she stumbled onto the ground, but the smile on his face faded when their eyes met. Maybe she couldn't glare as well as her mama but Alice had eighteen years of practice, and Sam lowered his head just enough for her to reach up and give him a noogie, both of them giggling when Dean grabbed their arms and pushed them out the gate.

The ground was firm, warmth rising up through the soles of her sandals, and the long grass tickled Alice's ankles as she twirled in place to look at both of them. The sun was hot on her hair, sweat trickling between her shoulder blades, but the matching sunburn across both of their noses made Alice grin; wishing she was ten and could poke their noses before she started running through the food stalls and carnival games, both of them hollering about what they were going to do when they caught her – just like they used to yell about all that mud they were going to stick down her dress when they used to chase her through the trees back on the farm.

"I'm having words with your papa at dinner," Alice said, her hands held loosely behind her back as her smile widened. "I can't believe you both tried to throw me off a Ferris wheel and you're not even offering to buy me some ice cream. And he's probably not gonna be so thrilled when I tell him about how one of his sons likes to try getting to second base with terrified girls on carnival rides."

Sam snorted and Dean grinned back at her, scratching underneath his ear. "You like waffle cones, Sweet Pea?"

"The biggest you can find," she answered, reaching up on the tips of her toes to brush her mouth against his. "With lots of sprinkles."

"And I want chocolate chips on mine," Sam added. His eyes glittered like he had just swallowed a canary, standing up to his full height when Dean raised his eyebrows. Sam's voice went low; a scratch in the throat that growled 'Winchester' like nothing else could, her heart sputtering because Sam was staring at his brother with the same squared shoulders as his papa. "Hey, I'm not the one who copped a feel."

"You little _bitch_." But Dean laughed, gesturing with his head towards the battered wooden picnic tables set up underneath a scattering of trees. "If I were blackmailing some poor innocent guy into buying me ice cream, that's probably where I'd be sitting when he was done."

Dean turned on his heel and Sam's shoulders sagged, thin hands sliding into his pockets as his elbow bumped into Alice's arm. He was taller than she was and she'd never even noticed until Sam Winchester had stood as proud as a bear, and something in the way his shaggy hair curled around his ears made Alice touch his arm, fingertips pushing into the lean muscles hidden underneath the skin – and she was the one who pulled her hand back when Sam sighed.

He didn't say a word until they were sitting at a picnic table, his legs stretched out in front of him; didn't say a word until a cool breeze swept through the leaves and Alice twisted so she could rest her elbows on the table, tracing a whorl on the bleached plank with her eyes.

"Dean's not going to college. He's not even gonna try in a couple of years." Sam's breath came out in a huff. "One of Dad's friends said that he'd help but Dean says college isn't even a _choice_ 'cause he knows what's out there."

"It's his path, Sam. Your papa's now, too," Alice returned softly. She could feel the heat of Sam's stare on her cheek, spreading her hands flat on the table in front of her. "Dean was popping bulls-eyes on tin cans when I was still making clay faces and slapping them on trees."

"How come it feels like I'm stuck on a path that isn't mine?"

Alice closed her eyes, an ache in her throat as the wind picked up speed and blew her hair backwards from her face – but if the leaves were whispering something important, all it sounded like was the brush of branch against branch as a leaf touched down on her cheek.

"You just haven't found yours yet. Mama says it takes longer for some than for others." She rested her chin on her hands, elbows on the table. "But you Winchesters are stubborn."

"What about you?"

Alice sighed, the left corner of her mouth quirking up as she met Sam's eyes; muscles burning as she lifted her feet off the ground. "I'll probably stumble across it when a bee stings my ass and I fall down trying to swat at it." She bumped her hip into his and Sam was laughing as he bumped her back.

That laugh reached Sam's eyes when an ice cream cone appeared right in front of his face, heaping over with chocolate chips already melting in the sunshine. Alice stood up and shaded her eyes with one hand, smiling up at Dean when he handed her an ice cream cone covered with so many sprinkles that it looked like the cone was full of them.

Dean had a cone of his own, plain white vanilla piled on top of itself, and he stared right at her as he licked slow across the curve with the same hooded eyes that watched Alice from between her thighs and she shivered, sprinkles peppering her own tongue when she stared right back. She reached up and brushed her thumb against the corner of his mouth, twirling the pad between her lips as she sucked vanilla beans and sugar off of her skin with a moist pop.

"Get a _room_," Sam muttered.

"Making girls squirm is half the fun, Sammy." Dean chuckled, rolling his eyes when Sam shot Dean a dark look over the top of his ice cream cone. "And it's even more fun when girls fight back." He punched Sam lightly on the arm. "You should be taking notes. I'm not always gonna be around to teach you stuff like this."

A hot flush started creeping up Alice's neck that had nothing to do with the sun, returning the grin Dean flashed her with the ghost of a smile and hoping that he didn't see the lie; hoping that he couldn't see the sliver of ice jagging its way up her spine like it always did when the truth stopped hiding, slithering its way past the calliope on the carousel and the children laughing around them wherever she looked. That path of his only ended one way, with blood and shouts as sharp as any soldier's in the middle of a war, and there was no use wishing the world would start spinning backwards just to change it – not when everyone's road ended with the shine falling from their eyes.

Alice looked up at the sky and took a breath. The time was coming soon enough when they'd pick their way through all the blankets on the field behind the high school, looking for her mama and their papa and the big basket of food Mama would have brought from the farm, but the sun hadn't set yet.

And there was another truth standing in front of her, both of them devouring ice cream cones while she watched.

"You know what's funny?" She swallowed, pushing down the ache when they looked at her. "Barbara Jean's been making me come to this stupid thing since I was ten and not once has anyone tried to win me a stuffed animal." Alice cocked her head, her cheeks hurting from smiling too hard. "I bet the two of you could clean the clocks out of that shooting booth."

"Bet we can." Dean glanced slyly at Sam. "And I'm betting I can clean Sam's clock."

"You're so going down!" Sam was grinning so wide it was like watching him win _The Game of Life_ all over again. "When you lose, I'm gonna make you do all of the laundry for a month."

"When I beat you, you're gonna clean all the weapons covered in goo for a year," Dean retorted. "But first we're taking Alice on the Tilt-a-Whirl and then I was thinking we could hit the Fun House. Stop and say 'hi' to the clowns."

"Bite me," Sam shot back.

They were already walking down the path between food stalls, arguing about how little Sammy Winchester was afraid of clowns and how Dean Winchester was going down because he was an asshole; waving around their ice cream cones and upping the ante on bets while the good folks of Shelton stared at their backs as the Winchesters passed by. Giving them as wide a berth as the kids at school used to give her on the playground when Alice patted trees or squatted down to stare at a bug.

She had to run after them just to catch up.

By the time they collapsed on Mama's blanket, Alice was carrying the two biggest stuffed animals from Sharpshooter Bill's and her sides ached from laughing, her throat scratchy from all the screaming whenever a ride had her upside-down and her curls were wild from catching every sun-soaked breeze. Even sitting there sprawled on a bear and an elephant, her head was spinning topsy turvy and she finally kicked off her sandals and wriggled her toes. Alice scooted over just enough for Mama's arm to come around her shoulders, both of them watching John Winchester smile when his boys started playing Rock, Paper, Scissors.

Alice started laughing all over again when Dean tried to get Sam to go two out of three because there was no way in hell he was cleaning bloodstains out of jack thanks to a shooting game being rigged. Dean was still coming up with all the reasons why Sam hadn't won fair and square when Mama started passing out meatball sandwiches, shooting out another theory between bites and spraying tomato sauce, and he didn't stop until sparklers started lighting up all around them.

Mama leaned against John as the high school marching band began lurching its way through "America the Beautiful" but Alice pushed back the stuffed animals so that she could lay on the blanket with Sam plopped down on one side and Dean stretched out on the other.

The first round of fireworks burst into the dark, drowning out the music, and Alice slid her hands out until they bumped into wrists and arms. Sam twitched and Dean sucked in a ragged breath but nothing was keeping Alice from curling her fingers through theirs and pulling their hands in close to her hips; never letting go while she stared up at the sky.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Alice woke up to chirping birds and a shaft of sunlight refracting off the glass of her bedroom window, eyes fluttering open to the slow rhythm of Dean breathing steady.

The sheets were tangled around their feet, pushed down to the edge of the bed along with Alice's comforter. She was curled on her side, sweat-slick where skin met skin; moisture pooling in the cracks between her elbows and knees. But Dean was sprawled next to her on his back, one arm flung across her shoulder. His mouth relaxed into a smile when she brushed the scatter of freckles across one cheek with her thumb, sweeter than any smile Dean would conjure after his eyes opened, and Alice leaned forward to kiss the corner of it.

There were freckles splashed all over his chest, enough to make her turn around and map a feather-light trail down to his belly; freckles splashed all over his abdomen, hiding themselves inside the crease where his hip met his thigh and winding their way underneath the thatch of hair between his legs. Alice took in the scent, all salty sweat and warm musk as hot as her breath when she took his cock into her mouth, swirling her tongue around the head until Dean's hips shuddered and a groan broke through the birds trilling outside.

Fingers dug into her hip with a rough 'c'mere' that burned until she was lowering herself down over his mouth and his hands were on her ass, her legs going wide with an 'ah' when his tongue dipped between warm folds. It flickered across her clit, playing hide and seek in counterpoint to the scratch of hair on the inside of her thighs and the bob of her head as Alice moaned around him. She sucked hard and she sucked soft, hand at the base of his cock, and Dean scratched up her back with another groan when a pulse pounded against her lips; a liquid warmth filling her mouth before he grabbed her thighs and pinned her against those lips of his and it was all she could do to bunch her fists in the sheet underneath him.

She kissed his hipbone, turning around when she stopped trembling and Dean finally let go, and sank down next to him. Alice wrapped her arms around him and rested her head in the crook of his neck; hooking one leg over his while she drew circles on his chest – watching the rise and fall until she heard the call of the wind chimes.

"Morning," Alice said softly, raising herself up on an elbow.

"Damn. I could get used to you being my alarm clock." Dean grinned at her, touching her collarbone gently; like she was a bubble ready to burst if he breathed on her the wrong way. "You sure as hell know how to wake up a man."

"And you really know how to sweet talk a girl." Alice snorted, tracing the thin scar on his cheek before bringing her mouth down to his; opening up to him with a sigh when his tongue darted inside, drinking in the taste of them both as her hair fell around them. "Jackass," she murmured against his lips, feeling the curve of another smile. "You're just lucky I'm still letting you kiss me – 'cause if you'd called me a cuckoo clock, I'd be rolling you onto the floor."

"Anyone ever tell you that you're one crazy chick?"

Whatever she was going to say got lost in her rumbling belly, the noise echoing through her bedroom loud enough to make Dean laugh. All that she managed afterwards was a squeak, collapsing on top of Dean and staying there until Mama called 'breakfast' from down the hall. Dean kept right on laughing when they both scrambled to sit up, catching arms and legs on each other before untangling enough to get dressed, and he beat her to the bathroom.

Alice was still standing outside waiting to get in when Dean's papa poked his head into the hall from the stairwell, her cheeks going red when she realized that she was wearing Dean's t-shirt instead of her own nightgown.

It was worse during breakfast, when Alice would catch John watching her every time she passed the platter of bacon to Sam or pushed a jar of blackberry preserves in Mama's direction; speculative stares with narrowed eyes and a bend to his mouth, his shoulders hitching up every time he took a breath and something washed across his face that kept his mouth shut. That didn't keep him from frowning at Alice when she finally met his gaze, a look overflowing with the dust rising up from the Impala's tires as it drove away.

The look made her feel like she was eight years old all over again, wearing her best dress and a pair of shiny black shoes with her hair wrestled into two thick braids; sitting alone on the top of the porch steps until John Winchester saw her, the stiff frown on his face turning into a smile when he knelt down to look her square in the eyes. Alice threw her arms around his neck when John started telling her how brave Papa was in a voice as soft as it was rough, how Papa was gone because he spent his life saving good people and how much her papa loved his red haired girls. Always carrying a picture of her and Mama both that Papa would show to anyone who asked – and even some who didn't.

But there was something John had never said, a secret hidden behind the way his arms tightened around Alice's shoulders. A secret that took ten years to untangle, busting out into the open when Dean stopped calling Sam a cheater long enough to ask Mama if he could set up a shooting range in the pasture where Alice practiced her bow. She saw it in the way John's fingers twisted the wedding ring he still wore, in the way his jaw clenched when Mama surprised all of them by returning Dean's grin and saying 'yes' so long as they used tin cans and Papa's old BB guns and the fence posts leaning on the wall outside of the shed.

Every weather vane needed a place to turn from.

The wind chimes started ringing outside and Alice held her breath, watching John's hand twitch next to his coffee cup and waiting for him to tell his boys to pack up but he just shook his head with a gruff laugh and told them to say 'thank you' while their chairs dragged away from the table. Dean was already telling Sam where they were setting up the posts as they dumped their dishes into the sink, their boots thumping across the floor until their voices were nothing more than a murmur from the back porch.

Alice was halfway to the back porch herself when she stopped and turned around, throwing her arms around John Winchester's neck and whispering her own 'thank you' against a scruffy cheek.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Mama had given away every weapon Papa had used to hunt, the silver knives he had blessed every month by a priest out in Westerly and the guns he used to clean out on the back porch while he sang along with the radio, but she kept Papa's BB guns in an old trunk out in the shed.

Sam helped Alice drag it out from behind the bags of chicken feed while Dean was moving the last of the fence posts, both of them coughing from the dust it raised, and she grabbed two of the work cloths hanging on the wall to wipe as much as she could away. Even the metal corners and the hasps were covered in dust, collected in the cracks for ten years after it had been pushed into the corner of the shed a month after Papa's funeral. Alice slid the rag along the top until she could see her papa's name written out in stenciled letters, the 'Jacob Tompkins' imprinted into the dog tags Alice kept upstairs in her sandalwood box.

"How come you don't use your dad's last name?"

"There's power in names, even one as humble as ours." Alice brushed her cheek with the back of her hand, smiling at Sam when he started cleaning off the hasps. "Meeks women have been living and dying on this land before the first crop was planted and only the last Meeks woman will know when it's time for us to leave."

"So I'm kinda screwed being named after a rifle."

The way Sam said it made Alice's fingers twitch, her laugh scratching up her throat like she was choking on a cloud of ash because the last thing Samuel Winchester should have been worrying about was his last name – not with that half-shadow crossing his face when he looked at her. And Alice figured she was lucky when the rag dropped from her hand, hiding the blood draining from her cheeks when she bent over to pick it up. Her fingers flexed around the rag just as Dean's sharp whistle drifted in through the open window.

The hardest answers to give were the ones for questions that had never been asked.

"Only if you think you are." Alice watched Sam's jaw work, his hand bunched around the scrap of orange cloth he was rubbing on the top of the trunk. "Mama says that we make our names as much as they make us." She swallowed, her mouth quirking up at Sam when their eyes met, and she heard the creak of the hinge as the door opened. "There's one thing I know for certain about Winchesters besides the fact that you're a bunch of jackasses."

"And what's that, Sweet Pea?" Dean sauntered towards them across the hard-packed dirt floor. He sat down next to Alice, bumping her knee and raising his eyebrow like a dare while he grinned at her.

"That you're the best men I know," she said softly. It was Sam's turn to drop his rag and Dean started scratching underneath his left ear, staring at the wall past Sam's shaggy head. Alice hooked her thumbs underneath each hasp, flipping them open into the silence. "I sure as hell wouldn't be letting you root through my papa's trunk looking for some BB guns if you weren't." And she wouldn't have spent months working on leather with Running Bear or polishing all that crap for Reid Alred three towns over if those boys of John Winchester's weren't worth the cuts and the sore hands. "It's not like I get presents for every yoo-hoo who passes through Mama's store."

The stale air inside the trunk spilled into the shed with a dusty hiss, escaping through the crack between the lid and the base. Alice was pulling the metal loop off of the second hasp when Dean touched her arm.

"We, uh…" His voice trailed off when their eyes met. "We got you something."

"Dad said we'd be here close enough to your birthday for it to count," Sam added. He leaned over and poked Dean in the arm. "Only we were gonna get a cake before we told you."

"You…" Alice's stomach ached, watching the way their faces lit up when they both started laughing. They were always getting blown somewhere, another life saved with every new leaf turning over, and that was the important thing – the big thing that outweighed the weeks between postcards and the months of not seeing them smile. But they had remembered her birthday. She swallowed. "You didn't have to."

"You're always sending us stuff in those packages your mom mails to Bobby." Dean shrugged, slipping an arm across her shoulders. "And Sam's been busting a gut for a week trying to figure out how to give them to you." He was smirking at her when she tilted her head up. "Apparently, there was gonna be cake. But I was really hoping for a big ass clown that would make us balloon animals."

"Screw you, Dean!" Sam picked up his rag and flicked it towards Dean's chest.

She hitched up and kissed Dean's smile. "Let's do it now." Alice scrambled to her feet, stretching her arms up over her head. "You go get your presents and I'll go get mine and then we'll meet up on the porch."

Sam was already out the door when Dean stopped in his tracks, looking back at her over his shoulder. Dean's eyes were soft, as soft as they had been on the night she snuck into his bed and kissed the butterfly bandages holding his cheek together, and the rolling dust that had been collecting there since he was four was all that much easier to see when it wasn't hiding behind a grin. But it surprised her when Dean stopped Alice at the threshold, planting a kiss of his own on her mouth before jamming his hands in his pockets and turning on his heel.

One day those eyes would be as hard as his papa's, nothing left but hard little stones when the weather vane started to turn, and it didn't matter how many ribbons Alice Meeks tied onto her oak tree or how many charms she wrapped around the stack of Dean Winchester's postcards.

It hurt to breathe, her mouth moving like she was a fish thrown up onto a bank; wiggling on her side in the mud and wishing for something to cool her lungs. The ache in her chest got stronger when his shoulders slumped and Dean started whistling that goddamn Kansas song.

Songs lied as much as they told the truth.

Alice followed him, a buzz rising through her feet until she caught up with Dean; walking so close to him that their arms touched. He stopped whistling when they reached the porch, chuckling at the slap of bare skin against wood when Alice tripped up the steps, and headed around the side of the house towards Sam's voice hollering his name. She laughed herself, shaking her head and strolling into the kitchen where their parents were huddled over books; muted voices full of urgency and the heavy scratch of John Winchester's pen against paper as he copied something into his leather-bound journal.

She slipped past them into the foyer and up to her room, her skirt swirling around her knees as Alice closed the door; smiling when a crack in Sam's voice wafted into her bedroom through the crack in her curtains.

But her goddamn fingers were trembling as they caught the corners of her sandalwood box. Alice swallowed and plucked out the two small velvet bags she had kept in there since April, along with a bear fetish; the shaggy ruff along its back curling like Sam's hair around his ears. She slammed the lid closed and shoved the box back under her bed before she could touch the red candle, the same glistening color it had been since that woman had run the tip of her index finger along its length; before she began untangling the cords she bound it with and feeling the shock it sent up through her arm, smelling the rot the woman's scent had left behind on everything she touched.

Alice's fingers were still trembling when she pulled the leather bracelet out of its bag, hooking the fetish onto it and wrapping the small leather ties Running Bear had made around the clasp.

And her breath stopped coming out as a wheeze by the time she slipped the bracelet back into its blue bag.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The creak of the porch swing greeted her when Alice opened the back door. Sam was sitting on it, his long legs stretched out in front of him while the swing moved back and forth.

He clutched something rectangular that could only be a book in his arms, holding it close to his chest, and stared at the misshapen bundle of newspaper near Dean's right foot like it was going to burst on fire. Dean's left foot was braced against the clapboard wall, his hands still in his pockets.

Sam solemnly handed her his present. It was wrapped in brightly colored paper, complete with ribbons and a bow. Every edge was perfectly squared and all she had to do was lift the tape on one side and slide the book out into her hand. The cover was rough to the touch, worked leather with embossed letters reading _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_ across the front, and there were pressed flowers in the yellowed pages; sacrificing the ghost of their perfume when Alice touched them, blue violets and white lilacs scattering through the soft breeze into the song of Mama's wind chimes.

"Do you like it?" Sam asked softly. "I didn't see it in your bookcase."

"No one's bought me a book for that case since Papa died." She closed the book, brushing her fingers against the words, and traced the letters of her name before Alice leaned down and kissed Sam's forehead. Nothing kept the pang from stabbing deep in her belly when Sam jerked, even with his face scrunched up like he knew it was coming, and she slipped the blue velvet bag into his hand before she stood up. "And this is for you."

"Thanks," Sam stammered, his thin fingers tugging on the drawstring. His face broke out into a grin when he saw the bracelet, slipping it onto his wrist. The fetish hung near the knob of bone on his wrist and the braid was looser than she hoped it would be – but the way Sam was growing, there wasn't a reason to tighten the leather.

Alice blinked, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, and looked up at Dean. She held out the green bag without saying a word, watching his eyebrow quirk up as he took it, and she stared down at her feet when he started opening it; wriggling her toes and wishing her goddamn cheeks would stop burning. Giving the damn thing to him was dumber than getting sweet talked into a kissing booth on the Fourth of July, let alone doing it in front of Sam; his eyes flickering between the two of them.

Only an idiot would give a boy a ring, even a silver one with four runes inscribed on the inside.

Dean sucked in a breath, letting it out with a bark of a cough that could make a throat hurt just by hearing it. He was squinting at the inscriptions on the inside of the ring when Alice got up the guts to stop gawking at her toes, holding it between a finger and his thumb.

"Uruz, huh?" Dean let out a low whistle. "You worried I'm not gonna put out or something?"

"It figures you'd recognize that one," she retorted, her lips curving into a smile all the same because Dean was sliding the silver band onto the ring finger of his right hand.

But Alice was the one feeling the spark between her thighs; an itch creeping through her when Dean twisted the ring just like his Papa did, his eyes as soft as they had been in the shed. All she wanted to do was push him up against the clapboard wall and pop open the buttons on his jeans, sliding her hand past the elastic of his underwear and see how long it would take before Dean hiked up her dress; before he picked her up and slammed his mouth down on top of hers, both of them moaning as her arms came around his neck.

And doing nothing but standing there watching him made the itching worse.

She set her book on the swing next to Sam, laying it out on top of the wrapping paper, and picked up the raggedy bundle sitting near Dean's foot. The only thing keeping the newspaper in place was the weight of the basket it was tucked underneath, three crumpling sheets snatched by another breeze singing through the wind chimes. Sam grabbed the paper before it blew away and Alice's mouth twitched when she wrapped her hand around the handle of the basket. There was a jumble of color inside, different soaps and lotions and shampoos stamped with the logos of cheap motels, and a loofah sponge that had seen better days.

"It's…" Alice blinked.

Sam snorted. "A bunch of stuff Dean stole."

"Couldn't afford a fancy gift basket from one of those body wash stores," Dean said lightly. His mouth quirked up at her when their eyes met. "But I know how much you love taking those baths of yours, Sweet Pea. So I made you one."

"Thank you," she managed, rustling through the bottles and bars of soap. The basket was heavier than it should have been, even full of all those things Dean must have been stockpiling for months, and her fingers brushed against fabric; something solid that she could curl her fingers around, a handle wrapped in silk and what felt like a braided cord. Alice's eyes widened, glancing at Dean. He was staring right at her when she kicked his boot with her toe. "You wanna help me bring my stuff up to my room?"

"You need help carrying a book and a basket?" But Dean tugged the basket out of her hand and kicked himself off the wall, heading towards the back door. He grinned at Sam over his shoulder. "Don't sit around waiting, Sammy. She gave me a ring with a sex rune."

"You're gonna need it after giving her a basket full of _crap_," Sam shot back.

Alice giggled, picking up the book and the wrapping paper, and Sam didn't even jerk when her lips touched his forehead a second time. "I love the book, Sam," she murmured. She held it tight in her arms, catching another whisper of lilacs and violets, and turned on her heel to follow Dean into the house.

He was the one who closed the door to her bedroom, pushing Alice into her bookcase before she could say a word. The basket snagged on her dress and the edge of the book pressed hard into her belly and his tongue was sliding into her mouth like it didn't belong anywhere else, a hand tangled into her hair so she couldn't pull away until he was good and ready to let her go, until she was breathing 'Dean' against his thumb, brushed across her lower lip swollen with the taste of him – all sweat and sunshine.

"You sure know how to set a girl to tingling," Alice said softly.

Dean chuckled and let go of her hair, licking his thumb and pushing it down on her forehead. "That's 'cause I've got special skills."

He smiled, leaning in close to her ear. He swung the basket backwards as the hairs on her neck began to prickle but whatever he had wrapped up in that smirk of his was swallowed whole by a jagged tear when the snag ripped a line down the front of her dress.

Alice snorted, resting her forehead on his chest.

"Shit!"

"Whatever you're hiding underneath all that stolen shampoo better be good 'cause your special skills just ruined my favorite dress." She tilted her head up, standing on the tips of her toes to kiss his cheek. Alice leaned down and picked up the basket, putting the book on the shelf before sliding up onto her bed. "You gonna stand there all day just watching me?" She kicked her legs while she waited, the right one showing bare skin to her hip. "Can't rightly thank you if you're all the way over there," she added.

"You're the one who gave me a sex ring." Dean stretched out next to her on the bed, grinning as he slid one hand up her leg. He snapped the elastic on her underpants, right where her hip met her thigh. "Don't go complaining just 'cause I started ripping your clothes off."

There was nothing to do but return his grin, dragging the basket onto the bed and setting it down between them before she finished what he started – before she threw her dress onto the floor and tugged his t-shirt out of his jeans and sprawled across his thighs, bruising his lips with hers before following the roadmap of his freckles with her fingers and her tongue.

Alice sucked in a breath, diving through the soaps and the shampoos until her fingers touched fabric, and she picked up the cord-wrapped bundle by the handle. She pushed the basket to the side, plucking the knots out of the cord with trembling fingers. But her breath came out with a huff when she gently opened the white silk and saw the knife sitting there in the soft folds, a carved bone handle wrapped in oak leaves and acorns – and a turned-steel blade etched with ogham that would have made Reid Alred smile.

A woman's hum danced at the back of her skull when Alice touched the hilt, a small tap on her forehead while she traced the ridges of an oak leaf with the tip of a finger; a hum as soft as Mama's when the sun was shining and they were working in the garden and even Alice could feel the pulse down deep, the earth thick and dark between her fingers.

The hilt fit into Alice's hand like the knife had been made just for her, the blade flowing through the space between the both of them when she twisted her wrist to measure its weight. She touched the knife's point to her finger, testing the sharp edge as one drop of blood pooled across the whorls; one small sting marking it as her own.

"Jesus Christ, Alice," Dean hissed. "Be careful with that thing."

"I am being careful." Alice set the knife back down onto the silk, sucking on her finger. "Where'd you find a knife so pretty?"

"One of my Dad's friends picked it up on a job. Said it belonged to a good woman and I figured..." Dean shrugged his shoulders as his voice trailed off, scratching at his neck. "I figured I could teach you how to use it." His face broke out into a grin. "If you ask me nice enough, I might even throw in some hand-to-hand."

"Now you're just coming up with excuses to grope me." Alice tapped his shin with her foot. That low chuckle of his wasn't a denial. "And what makes you think I don't already know how to use it?"

"For starters? You were waving around eight inches of Damascus steel like it was a butter knife," Dean shot back. "And it's not like you can use a freaking longbow in your mom's store." His eyes darkened, watching her wrap the knife back into its silk; her fingers twisting the cord into a new pattern of knots before she tucked it into the basket. "What if that chick comes back when you're alone?"

Her stomach turned all on its own.

And the shine staring at her when Dean asked the question was full of a wildcat's cry, the call to a path that wasn't hers to follow no matter how many nights she wished it was. The schooling she needed had nothing to do with the lessons a Winchester could teach, how to slash and how to stab and how to hold a knife while you were gutting the cat coming after your baby brother. There wasn't enough Tompkins' blood running in her veins for it to stick.

"I don't know," she replied, moving the basket out of the way. Alice straddled his thighs, cradling Dean's face in her hands. "But that knife's not made for killing."

"I'm still teaching you how to use _something_," Dean said, a storm cloud clamping his fingers tight around her upper arms. "Even if it's a goddamn steak knife."

That look of his was the real gift, so full of devotion that her throat swelled when his voice cracked. It was the look that made him press one hand to his bleeding belly and roar out a challenge to the night sky while fur and teeth charged from the side; the same look that kicked down a wooden door, yelling his defiance into a face of darkness that slithered through the world in the shape of a woman. And it was the look that his calling would stamp on his face when the last howl brought him down.

"And you don't believe Winchesters are the best men I know," Alice whispered.

She brought her mouth down to Dean's, sighing when his hands spread open the tear to stroke her thighs. The silver ring was cool, a spray of goose bumps blossoming underneath it when it touched down on bare skin. What was left of Alice's dress got stuck on her shoulders, both of their fingers curled tight around the fabric when a sharp rap on her bedroom door and his papa's grumbling voice called them down to lunch.

Alice finished tugging the dress off and threw it onto the floor, smiling into the curve of Dean's neck when he tangled his fingers into her hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this chapter is a song lyric from "Mayfly" by Jeffrey Foucault.
> 
> I made the decision to use Nordic runes as the inscriptions inside of Dean's silver ring. I felt that the cultural associations were interesting and selected the following runes for specific purposes:
> 
> * Eihwaz: Strength, reliability, dependability, trustworthiness. Enlightenment, endurance. Defense, protection. The driving force to acquire, providing motivation and a sense of purpose. Indicates that you have set your sights on a reasonable target and can achieve your goals. An honest man who can be relied upon.
> 
> * Algiz: Protection, a shield. The protective urge to shelter oneself or others. Defense, warding off of evil, shield, guardian. Connection with the gods, awakening, higher life. It can be used to channel energies appropriately. Follow your instincts. Keep hold of success or maintain a position won or earned.
> 
> * Uruz: Physical strength and speed, untamed potential. A time of great energy and health. Freedom, energy, action, courage, strength, tenacity, understanding, wisdom. Sudden or unexpected changes (usually for the better). Sexual desire, masculine potency. The shaping of power and pattern, formulation of the self.
> 
> * Ingwaz: Male fertility, gestation, internal growth. Common virtues, common sense, simple strengths, family love, caring, human warmth, the home. Rest stage, a time of relief, of no anxiety. A time when all loose strings are tied and you are free to move in a new direction. Listen to yourself.
> 
>  
> 
> In many Native American mythologies, people are guided by totem animals. I felt that "Bear" has always been a good totem for Sam: Industrious, instinctive, healing, power, sovereignty, guardian of the world, watcher, courage, will power, self-preservation, introspection, and great strength.


	6. Against the chill that finds the bone

Stories had a way of spreading faster than magpies from the thunder.

Old towns didn't care what the stories were about so long as there was something shadowy inside, whispers that tended to nothing but the dark inside people's hearts until all that was left were the ghosts; those wild women who danced naked in the forest behind their ramshackle house, calling on spirits best kept to the night, or will-o-the-wisp phantoms slithering down the back roads past abandoned houses and the howls from the cemetery north of the mill where all those soldiers were buried without names to call their own.

Papa used to say that Shelton wasn't the only old town that liked nursing its secrets – but it didn't take much to shake out those stories like the good tablecloths Mama used when company was coming for dinner. Just a sweet-faced man named Daniel Ellison showing up at the bank with a deed to the old Blythe place and a plan to turn it into one of those fancy bed and breakfasts springing up like weeds all over the county.

It was all goddamn Michael Bailey wanted to talk about, a hot murmur into the curve of her neck that had nothing to do with the two of them biding their time at the crossroads while rain drummed down onto the roof of his junked-up car. There wasn't much hope of him shutting up the more he got wound up, even when Alice scratched down his back and arched underneath him, pushing her hips up into his.

"You're a fool idiot," she hissed into his ear. "Going on about a place where no one's lived for a hundred years like it's got some kinda boogey man hiding in the walls."

"Everyone between here and Sweetwater knows there's nothing kindly in that house," he retorted, sliding his hands up underneath Alice's shirt with a careless grin that made her ache in all the wrong places.

"That's 'cause you're all fool idiots."

There was nothing in that house – not the hanged man with a noose still around his neck that those high school kids from Lexington swore they saw back in the fifties or the little blonde-haired girl in a white dress that Barbara Jean swore she saw on the way to her grandma's funeral. There was nothing in that house but a bunch of old stories, lies so strong that Alice ended up dreaming about a dark-haired woman on her thirteenth birthday, rubbing her swollen belly and gliding across the chipped flagstones of that damn house's dead garden, crying tears of blood instead of salt.

Mama was already holding her close when Alice woke up screaming, brushing Alice's bangs off her sweaty forehead and whispering that stories were funny things; changing each time they were told until the truth was lost somewhere in the words.

Even if something unnatural was in that house, there were folks whose roads brought them close enough to set old ghosts to rest – hunters passing through Shelton on their way to somewhere else. And that wasn't even counting the ones who still thought she and Mama needed checking in on, Running Bear with his pockets full of fetishes and a new feather for Alice's box or Carl Bradley gunning up the county road with his motorcycle bags full of new books for Mama.

As many times as that big black car of his roared into the Meeks' driveway, only a yoo-hoo would have believed that John Winchester _hadn't_ dragged his boys out to that old house; another one of those training exercises he was always setting up for Dean and Sam while she was at school or helping Mama in the garden.

Alice would have been surprised if _Papa_ hadn't checked out the place before he died, walking through the door with a shotgun full of rock salt slung over his shoulder for good measure and one of Mama's charms tucked into his pocket. Walking right back out whistling the same song that echoed through the foyer whenever he walked through his own front door.

There were stories of her own that Alice Meeks could tell, ones that would make the blood drain from Michael Bailey's face, but his thumbs were making slow circles and all she could do was sigh; crinkling skin reaching towards rough calluses built by wrenches instead of the butt of a gun.

"You're the fool idiot," he said, his grin turning as hard as his eyes. "Always thinking you know more than anyone else 'cause you're a witch's daughter." He chuckled when Alice jerked, fingers pressing into her hips as he pushed her down onto the vinyl seat. "Way I see it, it's their own damn fault what happens to those city folks, calling up trouble from not understanding the way of things."

It wasn't Michael Bailey's fault that he would never understand the way of things, how the dark fought back until something came along to stop it no matter how bloody and sad the whole thing was going to end, but that didn't keep Alice from jamming her knuckles between two of his ribs just the way John Winchester's boys had taught her.

"Jackass," she spat, cheeks burning from two parts shame and the one part deep inside that made her fingers twitch. Alice twisted out from underneath him, pulling her jeans jacket tight around her chest. "The only thing that's gonna happen in that house are two people setting down roots."

"Fuck you!"

"Someone might," she snapped, opening the door and sliding outside, "but it's never gonna be you anymore." Alice popped her head back into the car. "And the next time that little sister of yours slinks up to my mama's house thinking there's a love spell waiting for her with Bobby Kimball's name on it, I'm dragging her back to the county road myself."

Michael Bailey was still cussing when Alice slammed the door hard enough for something to rattle.

She trudged up the county road as raindrops spilled into every crack and crevasse, stomping through the mud with her hands jammed into the pockets of her jeans jacket, and she shivered once when a crack of lightning burned its way across the sky.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

There were some mysteries that a Meeks woman took on faith, like the way the earth thrummed inside her belly when she was on her knees in the garden with the sun spreading warm across the back of her neck.

But some signs didn't take more than time to learn how to see.

The sugar cookies cooling on racks in the kitchen meant that company was coming, the clean smell of chamomile tea as sure a sign as spaghetti sauce for all that it was someone else who would be knocking on the front door before the afternoon was done, but the sharp rap of the knocker echoing through the foyer made Alice jump all the same.

The sound had Mama stopping in her tracks, smoothing her hair back from her face and replacing her frown with a smile before she opened the front door. Daniel Ellison's blue eyes were bright against the clouds when he smiled at Mama and introduced himself – and nothing could dim the way his face glowed when he wrapped an arm around his pregnant wife's shoulders, not even Mama's searching gaze when she asked the Ellisons if they would help her drink up a pot of tea.

The look on Mama's face when Alice followed them into the kitchen was as much a warning as the words she wouldn't say.

It wasn't like Alice was going to stick around listening to some married couple asking after a midwife when there were chickens to feed and berries to pick before the storm dancing in the clouds outside bruised the juice right out of them. All she wanted was a bucket for the berries and a pair of gloves and enough time when she was done to curl up with _Physica_ on the porch swing before the rain came in.

But Daniel Ellison's questions made the soles of her feet itch, setting small shivers up Alice's spine as the room started filling up with all of those stories that weren't supposed to be true – about the little blonde-haired girl and the scratching in the walls when the house was settling. Marita Ellison's voice shook right along with the wind when she asked how Orson Blythe had killed his baby girl and why there was a broken-hearted woman that no one could see sobbing out her sorrow on nights when the moon was dark.

And it didn't take anything at all to see the skin stretched tight around their eyes when Mama set down her teacup, to see the phantom thing between them start to fade because the butcher on Main Street said that Jane Meeks out on that farm would know what to do.

Sometimes things came true when people believed in them hard enough.

Her mama just listened the way that she always did, telling them to bundle up against the weather when they left – but she was already turning on her heel as soon as the whir of tires kicked up rocks and dust and Mama didn't even wait for Alice to follow her into the shop, rummaging through the shelves and only looking up when Alice showed up in front of her carrying a milk crate. The way Mama suddenly smiled at her, they could have been packing for a picnic instead of collecting the things a Meeks woman used when there was something needful to be done.

"Take this out to the van, Sweet Pea."

There wasn't much to do but nod and walk to the front door of the shop, bumping it open with her hip and biting her lip when something inside set off a sound like a tiny bell. And there wasn't much to do but slide the crate behind the passenger seat and wait until Mama was ready, hopping into the van to hold the crate stable and wishing her heart wasn't speeding up to keep time with the staccato beats falling onto the roof.

The way that hummingbird heart of hers was beating, Alice Meeks was going to make a right mess of things the first goddamn time her mama brought her along on a cleansing. Just like that time she handed Mama a bloody rag instead of a clean one to wipe up Tommy Archer back when he was getting born.

They started with a house blessing, salt water in a ceramic bowl sprinkled on window sills and Mama's sing-song voice calling out all of the old ghosts that a town had conjured for a hundred years. Alice followed her with the smudge stick, waving it in Mama's wake like she knew what she was doing instead of just doing what her mama said; pulling out a solemn expression every time Marita Ellison looked at Alice from her rocking chair.

Maybe she was just being kind, sitting there with her Madonna's smile instead of speaking the truth. There was more power dancing around the edges of that smile than anything Alice Meeks' could call after nineteen years of trying.

Those nineteen years had made it easier to see some things all the same.

It should have been Marita Ellison walking behind Mama with a fist full of dried sage, blessing the rooms where her baby would learn to walk; filling up the house with a mother's mystery, the riddles laid bare in her round belly and a laugh that could outshine the wind chimes outside losing themselves in their own dance. Maybe that was a kindness, too – sitting in her living room doing nothing but watching, rubbing the swell of her abdomen as she sang to her child, lilting melodies in Spanish that were soft and sweet and overflowing with wishes.

Their eyes met when a dark shadow crossed Marita Ellison's face, its half skull marring the smooth lines of her flushed cheeks, and Alice swallowed hard. She clutched the smudge stick tight enough for her knuckles to turn white and pulled her own smile out from wherever a Meeks woman kept them before following Mama into the kitchen.

There was a stink wafting through the crack underneath the battered door leading into the old cellar, strong enough to make anyone start gagging, and Alice was on her knees; heaving once before she bit the inside of her cheek, focusing on a woman singing lullabies and tamping down the decay and rot seeping into her lungs. Mama rubbed her back, the smoke from the dropped smudge stick making Alice's eyes water as much as the vomit she was choking down.

"Is something wrong?" Daniel Ellison's voice was soft.

"I won't lie to you, Mr. Ellison," Mama answered. Alice heard the swish of Mama's skirt as she stood up, falling onto the back of her heels just in time to see Mama open the window above the sink before looking Daniel Ellison right in the eye. "There's something unseemly in your house." Her voice was gentle even though Mama's mouth was a thin, hard line. "But don't you worry. We'll be seeing to it before the night's gone."

"With a bowl full of salt water and a handful of sage?" Knuckles scrubbed down his cheek. "Jesus, they... They said you could _help_."

Even a fool idiot like Michael Bailey would have heard the bitter in the man's voice.

Not that Alice could blame him, not when there was only one Meeks woman in the room who could dream true. All Mama had on her side were three different charm bags and a crystal ball in a milk crate. The daughter knocked flat on her ass, gagging on the smell coming up from the basement, wasn't doing jack except blocking the hallway with her sweat and her stink.

But when something roared up the driveway like it was chasing the Devil, Alice knew that there was one thing even her mama would always put her faith into – and he was slamming the door of his big black car shut, his rough voice telling his sons to stay sharp and bring the guns, his heavy footsteps crunching their way through gravel as he marched towards the house.

And the shine in Mama's eyes when the frayed curtains in the window framed John Winchester's head as he passed on by wasn't a mystery at all.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

There wasn't time for social particulars, what with the Winchesters standing in the living room sliding bullets full of rock salt into their shotguns.

Rain pooled around their boots while Mama's voice fought against the thunder with a rhyming incantation Alice had never heard her use, all guttural vowels and fierce consonants that spread like a slow sting through Alice's belly before settling into her fingers and toes.

And there was no way in hell she was crossing that room herself, no matter how much those feet of hers were burning to move.

All she wanted was to throw her arms around both of John Winchester's boys, whispering how brave they were and kissing their foreheads for luck because something in that house was strong enough to set the back of her head to tingling as soon as her mama had started chanting, but they weren't even looking in her direction; two boys who should never have been soldiers standing at attention and waiting for their orders, both of them giving a sharp nod when their papa said 'Grinning Man' and cocked his shotgun.

Alice knew the stories well enough but the laugh got her all the same, shrill like a hooting owl as it followed a crack down one of the baseboards; goose bumps springing up her arms and legs when a sharp chuckle danced near Alice's ear, the hair rising on the back of her neck as much from the laugh as from the crackle in Marita Ellison's voice returning the dare. A wolf's snarl hiding underneath words so pretty they came out like a song when she muttered them.

The only thing to do was what Alice Meeks did best.

She touched Daniel Ellison's arm, watched him swallow as he stared down at his wife like he was staring at a stranger – but he didn't jerk like Alice did when a laugh bubbled out of the fireplace.

"Nothing we can do here, Mr. Ellison," Alice said softly. "It's best to get your wife outside before..." Her voice trailed off, the scratch of his sweater rough against her fingertips when she tightened her hand and watched him nod. "We're gonna take her someplace safe until this gets sorted out."

The shutters on the windows started rattling from the wind whipping through the leaves outside as soon as Alice slipped an arm underneath Marita Ellison. She eased the woman to her feet, waiting for Daniel to take her by the elbow before daring a glance at Dean. He was on his knees, rummaging through the insides of a blue duffel bag until he pulled out a silver flask of what Alice figured was holy water. Sam was flipping through a book so old it should have been dust, with its tattered cover and thick crack down its spine, and there was a worry line creasing his forehead.

If there was any kindness at all, the pieces of herself she was leaving behind would be enough, the bear fetish on Sam's wrist that looked as small as the crescent moon charm on the old bracelet Papa had given her when she was six and the ring on Dean's finger that shone just as bright as it had on the afternoon she gave it to him; a girl's lonely wishes warding off the nightmares that came from too many days of waiting.

Mama was the one always telling her that wishes were enough.

But Mama wasn't the one slinking out the front door with a throb where her heart should have been, feeling nothing but stupid because the last thing Alice Meeks should have been wishing for was to see Dean Winchester's smile one last time, not when she was standing inside a house with a Grinning Man roaming somewhere inside the walls and a pregnant woman in the crook of her arm.

Not with the grin spreading wide in front of the fireplace like the Cheshire Cat. Cold fingers brushed the inside of Alice's wrist, a frozen flower blooming inside her chest just the way ice cracked across a window during a snowstorm. And if the damn thing laughed one more time, those feet of hers were going to start running before she could even get Marita Ellison out the front door.

"Not so fast now," a man's voice hissed, the stink cutting through the smoke from Mama's smudge stick as the words tumbled out from a shining smile. "The girl's marked by sin but she's still _mine_."

Doors started slamming shut and windows started closing themselves so hard that glass shattered. Alice twisted herself in front of the Ellisons, bracing her feet on the cold floor and wincing as she stepped on fallen shards. There wasn't enough of her to shield them both, not from the pinpricks leaving gashes across her arms and her legs or the laugh that was whirling around all three of them, but an arm bumped into her shoulder and she could see the barrel of a shotgun before she heard the bolt sliding into place; a glint of silver near the trigger.

Only a goddamn Winchester would tempt fate before saying 'hello.'

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

It was like that time Barbara Jean tripped backwards over a log, her arms flailing and her hair falling limp around her face before she landed flat on her ass; the wind knocked out of her before Barbara Jean even hit the ground.

Except there wasn't the snap of cracking bone, not like there was when Marita Ellison's body slammed into the wall near the fireplace and she slumped against the fractured plaster like she was nothing more than a rag doll caught in the middle of a two-year-old's temper tantrum – one leg twisted underneath her in a way that ached just to see; a puppet whose strings had been cut with nothing but a monster's laugh.

Its grin sharpened into points while Alice watched, swallowing as swirling cobwebs and sawdust coalesced into the shape of a man, and the shadow of a rough scar sliced across its neck as the dust took on the semblance of flesh. It moved towards the fallen woman with an outstretched hand.

"I told you that it's not seemly to go out like this." The pleading tone belied the smile, made a mockery of the sorrow conjured in the bright blue eyes staring merrily out of its body of dust. "Not even to visit your mama's grave," it added.

The damn thing's fingertips, as sharp as its teeth, were covered in blood.

Five identical crimson half-moons seeped through Marita Ellison's yellow dress, peeking through the latticework of her fingers when her hands came up to hold her belly. A low moan poured out of her husband, hitching breaths that kept time with the pulse rushing through Alice's temples, and the back of her scalp itched. There was nothing inside of her strong enough to keep Daniel Ellison from where he was going, only one chance to keep him from doing something that he wouldn't walk back from as sure as anything.

But Dean's name stuck in her throat.

Water stained the floorboards, spilling out from between Marita Ellison's legs.

"Get the fuck over here, Sammy," Dean roared.

Alice didn't realize that she had let go of Daniel Ellison's arm until her feet were slapping against rough wood, shards of glass working their way past the hardened skin on her heels. Marita's scream couldn't drown out the sound of something sharp cutting through soft flesh, a wet noise that melted into a groan, and the color was draining from Marita Ellison's face as fast as the water pooling on the floor underneath her.

The only thing to do was fall on her knees and wish for a circle that Mama would have known how to raise, to wish for something strong to come out of all those mornings Alice sat with her back against her oak tree and tried to pull the strength dancing between the roots up through her spine. Something hot pulsed underneath her palms as Alice crawled towards the fallen woman, the whisper of a calling-on song on her lips, eyes clenched tight with the hope that the trees and the tide would answer no matter how weak her blood was.

Hope was the strongest thing Alice Meeks had to her name, even it if was never enough.

Sam skidded to a stop behind her.

"Holy shit," he breathed. "Holy fucking shit."

Alice opened her eyes and sucked in a breath, getting a mouthful of hair for her troubles. The room might as well have been spinning around them, a rain-soaked wind running wild like someone had uncorked a tornado and let it go.

"Just lay the goddamn circle, Sam," she managed, tugging Marita's underwear down as gently as she could past the woman's swollen knee.

"But – "

Alice could see him out of the corner of her eye, just standing there watching; Sam's eyes going wide like someone had clobbered him on the back of the head with a stick. He probably never had much cause to see a child coming into the world – but the last thing the poor woman needed was Sam Winchester gawking at her like a slack-jawed yoo-hoo.

"You're the one standing there with the rock salt," Alice hissed, placing a hand on Marita's distended abdomen. A little body moved underneath her palm, too high up in her mama's belly to be anything but a girl. "None of us stand a chance if you don't," she added.

"I'll kill it as soon as it comes," a dark voice taunted. "I'll kill you before you can tell your mama's ghost what you did to me."

Sam's eyes were stormy as he pulled a handful of salt from the bag. It dripped slow out of his fist, his jaw clenched so tight that Sam looked more like Dean busting down the door into Mama's shop with a roar and a shotgun and nothing like the little boy who used to catch crawdads and laugh when they caught the ends of Alice's braids. He was growing into his name, the Winchester scratching itself into his bones for all that a different ghost was going to shine out of his eyes when the time came.

Alice shook her head sharply, grounding herself with the sound of a Grinning Man's litany.

"Children who misbehave are punished." The thing was so close, it could have been whispering in Alice's ear. "You tempted your father when he should have been grieving, tempted your father until he put something into your belly that no daughter should have."

"Orson Blythe."

Mama's voice cut through the wind and the heat on Alice's back, a command and a punishment all at once that turned a laugh into a gasp. If anyone could tear that thing apart piece by piece, it was her mama and John Winchester.

Marita moaned, her body shifting underneath Alice's hand. The baby was moving too quick, ripping her way out before that damn ghost could kill her – ripping her way out before a goddamn ghost killed her mama faster than the blood staining her mama's thighs would. Mama would have been able to calm the tremors tearing through Marita Ellison's body, finding the song gentle enough to stop Marita's tears with nothing but a brush of fingertips across her temple instead of trying not to bawl herself.

But Alice brushed the sweaty hair back from Marita's forehead all the same.

"Easy now," she whispered. There was no way anyone could hear her tiny voice against the splintering wind and the crack of a shotgun and two voices chanting; one high and one low – one cadence as perfect as an arrow rushing towards it target. Alice bent down so that her mouth touched the limp hair near Marita's ear, her arm throbbing when Marita's hand clamped around her wrist. "Hold on tight," Alice said, an ache building up in her belly. "Hold on as tight as you need to."

A contraction tore through Marita's body so fierce that her back buckled.

Sam met her eyes when Alice fell back onto her heels and he was already slipping his t-shirt over his head before Alice could say anything, both of them taking deep breaths when Marita started shaking. The poor woman was propped up against the wall as best as they could make her, bearing down hard for all that her knees were bending the wrong way; feet slipping on the slick all around her.

The only thing that Alice could hear was the pound of blood through her temples but she could feel the cold against her cheek and a shotgun shell dropped to the ground next to Sam's knee. All that mattered was the baby, coming unnatural fast and killing her mama from coming too slow all the same, a head pushing through mucus with another swell of blood. She got the baby breathing somehow, a startled cry that broke through the silence, and wrapped her tight inside Sam's t-shirt.

His fingers were just as cold as hers when Alice passed him the baby.

"Time to come home to Papa," a sibilant hiss murmured into the wind.

"You're gonna have to come through me first, asshole," answered a rough voice and the cock of a shotgun.

Marita whimpered, the afterbirth bringing with it another rush of blood that mixed with the water spreading the red stain across the floorboards, and her head fell backwards against the wall.

She was already getting cold while they did nothing but watch, breath coming out heavy like Marita Ellison was walking up the steep side of Weatherly Hill.

Alice's fingers twitched and she ripped a strip of fabric off of her skirt, swallowing as she bunched up the fabric and held it there with one hand, hoping it would staunch the flow long enough for the twitching to stop. "It's not time for you to go yet," Alice said softly. Marita's eyes focused on Alice's face, so full of hurt it made a heart sore. "Your baby girl needs her mama now more than anything."

They were both thick in the blood, a rusty tang that made her heady every time Alice breathed; a rusty tang that had her whole body twitching with the need to do anything but watch, twitching until Alice was sinking past the splintered wood and the beams holding up the house into the earth underneath – sinking down to the roots weaving their way through the soil and wrapping around her spine. A woman's hum resonated through Alice like a bell when she spread her palm across Marita Ellison's belly, flushing from the warmth wrapping her up in the arms of something as gentle as a breeze and as old as the oak tree out on the farm.

There was just as much power in blood as there was in anything, even blood as weak as hers.

Alice fell backwards, breath coming out in a huff as she sank into the arms that were still holding her tight, keeping her body from slumping over no matter how limp she got – no matter the pain arcing through Alice's skull or the way her body bucked, too tired to hold back the bile burning its way out of her throat.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Cool fingers that felt like home brushed the hair off of Alice's forehead, tucking a tangled curl behind her ear when a rain-soaked draft set her to shivering. Alice wrapped her hand around the glass someone was holding to her lips, the water passing rough over the ache in her throat until Alice pushed the glass away and opened her eyes.

There was a dull twinge in her belly every time Alice breathed – but that was nothing compared to the throb in her temples every time Alice moved her head. At least Marita Ellison's baby girl was making soft sounds, safe in the cocoon of Sam Winchester's arms, instead of crying as loud as she had a right to.

Her poor mama was resting easier than she should have been, stuck with nothing but a girl pretending to do her mama's work and a boy raised for soldiering, a flush creeping across her cheeks underneath darkened eyes still touched by a raven's call. A bloody handprint was splashed across Marita's dress, a crimson stain sitting stark against the yellow; marks from Alice's lifeline and the wrinkles between her knuckles soaked into the fabric along with the scar from that time she was helping Papa gut some trout and the knife slipped.

No amount of washing was going to clean that dress.

"There's my good girl," Mama said softly, her voice full of sunshine and wind chimes and a mother's pride that Alice didn't deserve – the only Meeks woman who couldn't do jack until her mama knelt behind her and finished calling whatever Alice was too weak to hold. But that didn't keep her mama from kissing the back of Alice's head before she let go, moving next to Marita Ellison with the smile already sliding off of her face.

The ache in Alice's throat only got worse watching the tears catch in Marita's eyes while she held up her hands for her baby girl; watching one little fist push its way into the air when Marita whispered something low that made Mama close her eyes and shake her head. And there wasn't much for Alice to do but wipe her cheek with the back of her hand once those tears finally started falling, her throat as tight as the arms holding Marita Ellison's daughter close.

The tattered hem of her dress swirled around her thighs as Alice stumbled to her feet.

She probably should have felt the broken glass stabbing into her heel when she stepped over the thick line of salt on the floor the same way she should have felt something when her toes reached the blood thickening around Daniel Ellison's lifeless body and she saw what was left behind, all cold eyes and curled fingers and a second smile sliced into his throat that was never going away no matter how hard John Winchester squeezed Dean's shoulder.

"You did good." John's voice was gruff, two gashes splitting his cheek as the words tumbled into the room, tangled up with soft sobs that Alice was never going to forget. Dean's jaw clenched while he slowly flexed his fingers, his eyes going dark when John's hand dropped to his side. "You protected your brother and that girl of yours. Couldn't ask for anything more than that, son."

But that didn't mean much with a dead man bleeding out in front of them, another ghost etched into their skin.

Dean scratched underneath his ear before jamming his hands into his pockets and a strangled noise popped out of his throat when he turned around and saw her gawking at him. The scowl on Dean's face only got worse when he took in her soiled dress and the dried blood on her hands and all those tiny cuts marking up her arms and her legs, little bee stings made from glass.

"Guess I'm gonna get the gas and matches from the car," he managed.

The way Dean Winchester looked at her, his eyes overflowing with the crackle and spit of fire, made Alice's stomach churn. She understood the particulars for all that Mama taught her different, had heard enough tales from the folks passing through Mama's store to know that angry ghosts could be sent to rest with salt and fire. How it was best not to take chances before vengeance and loss and whatever else kept a soul from passing could bind a person to his sin or her sorrow.

How they wanted to burn themselves instead of coming back unnatural.

Even Papa had been buried with a rune-stitched sachet full of salt, angelica and bay leaves; the final charm any Meeks woman would give her man.

It was more than Daniel Ellison was going to get in the end and a good sight less than he deserved, cut down by some twisted monster wanting the most precious things in his world – making the same choice her papa would have made, full of the same need that sent the people Alice loved most into the dark. It only seemed right to sit a vigil knowing that, knowing that the man had left behind a baby girl who would never see her own papa's smile or hear her papa's laugh or have the chance to see how brave her papa really was. Hoping that someone would be there to do the same for Alice Meeks on the day the dark laid low someone precious to her.

Even if that damn slash across Daniel Ellison's neck made her want to turn tail and run.

"I..." Alice shook her head sharply. "I'll go with you."

"The only place you're going is back home, Sweet Pea."

"The hell I am," Alice snapped. She stomped across the floor so fast that she was standing in the foyer before Dean caught up with her, his mouth twisting.

"The fuck you are," he retorted, grabbing her wrist when Alice reached for the door knob.

"I came here with my mama and the only person I'm gonna go back with is her." And it probably would have been more convincing if she wasn't acting like she was six years old.

"Jesus Christ, I'll…" Dean's voice trailed off, his eyes dropping to the faded scars on her right arm; tiny half-moons that he suddenly brushed with his fingers. "I'll drag you home myself if I freaking have to."

"I'm staying." Alice swallowed, wishing like hell that her voice would stop cracking every time she opened her mouth. Wishing like hell that Dean Winchester would stop staring at her goddamn arm with that goddamn frown of his until his eyes went soft and she was suddenly touching the scar on his cheek. "My mama needs me the same way your papa needs you and Sam."

He had the grace not to call her on the lie.

Especially when they both heard Mama's soft voice telling his papa that Marita Ellison needed to get to a hospital, that the bleeding had stopped but only just.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Dean Winchester could make a girl believe she was the most perfect thing on earth just by kissing her.

Water rained down on both of them, warm drops turning cold the longer he thrust up inside her; Alice hooked her feet behind his knees, propping herself up as they rocked hip to hip. She couldn't stop touching him, fingers digging into the coarse skin around the scars on his back to prove to herself that he was there; listening to sharp gasps whenever her hands grazed down a mottled bruise and not even knowing Sam was trying to sleep in the guest room on the other side of the wall kept her from moaning when Dean dipped his head down – a stuttering hitch that filled the spaces between them when Dean caught a nipple between his teeth and flicked it with his tongue.

There was nothing to do but tangle her fingers tight into his hair when that mouth of his left little glimmers of flushed skin wherever it touched, pulling his head back and bringing her lips down to his. Dean was already teasing past them, his tongue darting inside like a firefly; plucking out every gasp and groan until Alice spread her thighs wide. Hard thrusts cracked her open like she was that old honeycomb they stole from Mama's bees, swollen full of sweet and dripping over his fingers, and his thumbs pressed into her hips when she whimpered.

He was as swollen as she was, ready to spill over with every slap of skin against skin.

But Alice could still see Marita Ellison's eyes go wide during that one last push and she could still smell the rusty tang that filled the room right after, no matter how hard she tried to outrun the woman's white face playing on the back of her eyelids; no matter how hard Alice shuddered, a tremor fluttering around his cock.

"Fucking come for me, Alice."

She sucked in a breath, leaning her head back and bracing her hands on Dean's arms, and looked him in the eyes. Whatever she was going to say got swallowed whole by her bucking hips, lost in the goose bumps rising on her thighs and down her arms as her back arched; stiff little nubs brushing slick skin when his mouth wasn't sucking them. Dean grunted into her neck as they crashed into the tiles and pinned her there. That didn't keep Alice's hips from crashing into his, riding every swell that pulled him deep until his pulse pounded against hers and a ragged cry roared through the room, ripped out of her belly as defiant as a blue jay.

Alice lowered her head, shivering from the cold as each drop slid into cracks and crevasses. He was shivering himself, hitching up to capture her mouth with his; shivering when the pads of her fingers traced down his back, trailing down the scratches she left on top of those scars of his and every bruise blossoming underneath his skin.

Dean was still kissing her as he lifted Alice up by the hips, her legs sliding slowly down his until her feet were resting on the bottom of the tub. He hissed into her mouth when she slipped off the condom, reaching around his back and hoping she hit the wastebasket when she threw it outside the shelter of the shower curtain.

She rested her forehead on his chest, wrapping her arms loosely around his neck, still as hollow inside as she had been when Dean Winchester dragged her into the bathroom.

"How do you do it?" she asked softly, blinking away hot tears in spite of herself.

"Do what?"

Dean surprised her with a hand coming up underneath her chin, tilting her head up and holding it that way when she flinched from staring up into the ghosts and the dust that swirled inside his eyes even when he was watching her with as gentle a smile as the ones he made in his sleep.

"Stand between the dark and the people it wants to hurt." Her throat started aching all over again and it hurt to breathe, the way his face softened like she was another innocent he needed to protect. And maybe she had never seen eyes that stopped shining before Daniel Ellison but Alice Meeks had touched the truth of what monsters could do to a man, right there in her grandma's claw foot tub. She swallowed. "Watching them die while you stand there bleeding from the thing that tried to kill them."

"That _thing_ won't kill anyone else."

Alice couldn't keep from trembling. He sounded like every hunter who passed through Mama's store, singing the same refrain even when the lyrics were different; passing off the frost rattling around inside their rib cages with stories of the good they had done, a hunter's prayer holding them steadfast against the memories of the ones they lost carved through muscle and cracking through broken bone. One hand slipped down into his.

"But there's always something else that will."

"It's part of the gig."

"And so is dying," she snapped.

There was no use trying to take the words back for all that she should have kept her mouth shut, not after Alice had burned an armful of clothes in the incinerator after they got back. Not after Alice had scrubbed the crimson stains on her hands and her arms with that stupid loofah sponge Dean stole as a joke. She had kept right on scrubbing after the water ran clear, her skin rough and red until Dean pried the sponge out of her fingers.

Alice bit her lip as the color drained from Dean's face, his freckles standing out across his nose. He was frowning, a bend to his mouth that made him look like his papa, and he brushed one thumb across her cheek; catching another teardrop before it fell into the swirl of water rushing past their feet.

"You didn't run when the shit hit the fan," he said finally. "You're tough like your mom."

"Nothing says tough like bawling your eyes out after." She snorted, a laugh cutting its way out of her throat. "Mama's the one with the gift. I'm just the girl who ties ribbons on a tree 'cause there's nothing much else to do but hope." A hot flush spread down to her toes. "And I go to sleep every night hoping you're safe 'cause I don't know what I'd do if you weren't. That's nowhere near – "

Dean cut her off with a kiss that made her stomach jerk and pushed her backwards, tiles cool on her back. He left a wet trail across her breasts, sliding one hand between her thighs; curling two fingers up inside her as Alice moaned, pushing through the salt until she was throbbing around his knuckles. She leaned down just enough to capture his mouth, tongue dancing with his as fast as he moved his fingers into the swell, and she was nothing more than a spray of firefly kisses blooming across her belly; flickers sparking into flame and a moan that overflowed onto his hand just like that broken honeycomb.

"You talk too much," he breathed against her lips.

"And you're a yoo-hoo."

His mouth quirked to the left when he stood up but there was no hiding from the truth of things, no matter how that grin spread slowly across his face when he licked his thumb and pressed it right in the middle of Alice's forehead. Some hurts buried themselves too deep, hollowing out secret resting places and never bleeding clean once they were scabbed over.

Those eyes of his were going to be the death of her.

That didn't keep Alice from licking Dean's collarbone, marking a trail of her own past the jagged scars on his abdomen; not stopping until she was on her knees, one hand on each thigh. That didn't keep Dean from sighing when Alice's lips wrapped around his cock, rocking in slow counterpoint to the slip and slide of her mouth. Maybe it was a small thing, the tug of fists in her hair every time his hips bucked or the way her hands tightened around his thighs hard enough to leave behind the white imprints of her fingers when they were done.

Maybe it was never going to be enough in the end, maybe it could never hold up against the weight of the dark and the things that danced in it.

But Dean whispered her name like it was a blessing when they ended up back in her bedroom, tangled together on top of her comforter with the house settling around them.

And waking up next to him, his breathing slow and soft while a shaft of sunlight peeking through the curtains warmed her skin, was more than enough for her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this chapter is a song lyric from "I Dream an Old Lover" by Jeffrey Foucault.
> 
> _Physica_ is a series of books written by Hildegard Von Bingen, one of my personal heroes.
> 
> Angelica is an herb that is associated with "fire" in magical circles. It is a protective herb specifically associated with exorcisms. The same properties are associated with bay leaves, so I thought it was appropriate to incorporate them both into the sachet that was buried with Jacob.
> 
> On a personal note, I want to thank everyone who has asked about this story since I posted the last chapter. I know this chapter is long overdue and all of my multi-chaptered WIPs suffered from a lot of crap that happened to me in the last year and a half: anemia, menorrhagia, chronic fatigue, endometrial cancer, major surgery and chemotherapy. Now that I'm starting to feel more like myself again, I'm going back to the things I love most – and writing _Sorrow_ is one of them. Thanks for sticking with me until I could write it again. We're slowly but surely getting to the end of the story.

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this story is a song lyric from "I Dream an Old Lover" by Jeffrey Foucault and is entirely embroiderama's fault.


End file.
